sufi · Day 177 · Week 26
The Reed That Remembered Home
The lullabies that arrive unbidden when a mother holds her baby are not new — they are very, very old. The mother becomes the hollow through which an ancient tenderness passes.
When a baby comes, the mother becomes a flute, and what comes out is a lullaby older than the river.
In a town along a slow green river, there lived a flute-maker named Yusuf. His hands were dark from years of working with reeds. His eyes were kind.
Every morning, Yusuf walked along the riverbank with a small curved knife. He listened to the reeds. He did not cut every reed he saw. He cut only the ones that, he said, "were ready to sing."