When God said, “My hands are your,” I saw I could heal any

                            creature in this world;

              I saw that the divine beauty in each heart

                           is the root of all time

                                  and space.

                      I was once a sleeping ocean

                         and in a dream became

                                jealous of a

                                    pond.

                  A penny can be eyed in the street

                          and a war break out

                             over it amongst

                                 the poor.

                  Until we know that God lives in us

                          and we can see Him

                                   there,

                            a great poverty

                               we suffer.

Rabia of Basra (c.717–801) was born in the part of Mesopotamia that is now Iraq almost five hundred years before Rumi. Without argument, she is the most popular of the female Islamic saints and a central figure in the Sufi tradition.