I Write In 2018

Book Review - The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak

SPOILER ALERT!!!

This book was chosen as a Book Club book. It was not one I would have chosen, but I did enjoy it. I found that I took over 20 pages of notes - focusing mainly on the actual 40 rules of love that were mostly told to us by the character Shams. The story itself took a back seat.

This is an expansive book. There are several layers going on at once making it quite complex. First, the book tells the tale of Ella Ru ..stein and her life in Northampton in the year of 2008 (a more current time). She has been hired to read a book by the writer Azziz Z. Zahara. She is drawn to the author and begins a correspondence with him that eventually takes her away from her marriage. She sees her life as being so much more than a housewife and mother in an unhappy marriage.

As she reads the book, we are drawn back into the tale of Rumi (which occurred in 1242).

In essence it is a novel within a novel, but in reading the Zahara's novel of Rumi, Ella's life is transformed. I think the reader is also transformed by reading this story. I know I was.. I found my own spiritual center expanded as I came to further understand that ALL religions... at the heart are about LOVE. It is the dogmatic, legalistic zealots and people that hold firmly to their religious doctrines that see Shams (and Jesus) as someone in the wrong; someone who must be killed. Even Shams's killer is changed from his experience.

Shams was a friend of Rumi and he was also the one who led Rumi to enlightenment. When they first met, Rumi was a highly respected scholar who preached sermons to the people of Anatolia. Shams is very honest and forthright. His approach upsets the 'way of things' and for that he is despised. Rumi's youngest son dispises Sham's involvement in his family's household. Rumi's wife is unsettled, but though she has some issues with him, she ultimately accepts him and he helps her to see that loving the parts of her Christian heritage need not be pushed away in her conversion to Islam. Rumi's older son is supportive, but also has moments of doubt. Rumi's adoptive daughter gives up her life... and that is the one sad part within this tale. Even Sham's death does not seem to 'kill' his essence - he is still there in spirit.

Shams helps Rumi to see the larger world... to associate with social outcasts - a prostitute, a beggar, a drunk. Shams himself, talks to these people as equals. He also talks to a Zealot, reminding me of Jesus talking to the Religious Leaders, as he calls them up on their principles and beliefs.

The book began with an analogy of casting a rock into a pool of water - the pool of water will never be the same again. This got me thinking that everything we encounter, at any level - physical, emotional, intellectual - affects us and changes us. It reminds me that we must take care in what we 'feed' our bodies and our minds. Everything affects us. Our interactions, our reading, our viewing, our listening.... we are the sum of all our experiences and our reactions to external forces. It is who we are; it is what we believe -- the inside will reflect the outside.

Ugly, dark souls can poison us, but only if we let them. We can also chose to live by the light and shine our own light.

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