Can we dare to look at her for her?
“Show m
e where it hurts God said, and every cell of my body burst into tears before his tender eyes.”
Rabia grew up in a part of ancient Mesopotamia that is now Iraq, the fourth (Rabia) daughter of impoverished parents. Her parents died during a famine when she was young. As a homeless female child, she was very vulnerable with no family to help her. She was captured by slave traders, and went through considerable hardship – rape, enforced prostitution, and beatings. From his book “Love Poems From God” Daniel Ladinsky makes this statement concerning Rabia: “Rabia may be a timely spiritual voice for women of this century, especially for any woman who has had to suffer the crippling degradation of unwanted touch. She was both physically and sexually abused from an early age, yet still became one of the greatest women saints, and poets of history” After many years, she was eventually freed by her owner at the age of fifty. Legend say that for a while she lived in poverty earning a little to survive by working as a seamstress, a washerwoman, and as a flute player in a small cave with only a mat, a broken pot and a brick for a pillow she became a mystic who was sought out for her wisdom from far and wide. Here are some of her words.
