Portrait of Jalal al-Din Rumi by Haydar Hatemi . “We are the mirror as well as the face in it. We are tasting the taste this minute of eternity. We are pain and what cures pain, both. We are the sweet cold water and the jar that pours.” --Jalal al-Din Rumi as interpreted by Coleman Barks in The Essential Rumi War is an addiction to chaos that shreds human souls into tattered rags of trauma.   In acknowledgement of Rumi’s 806th birthday, I’m all for Syria, Al Qaeda, Al Shabaab, and all other countries and organizations at war with each other to exchange their guns and bombs for poems by Mevlana. Replace tanks and drones with open mics and let everyone brave enough go at it. Whoever spits the most verses, quatrains, long poems, or quotes by Rumi wins the right to proclaim peace and throw a feast in honor of sanity, brotherhood, sisterhood, and childhood. Is that likely to happen? No, not very, but the ecstatic beauty and soulful grace of Rumi’s poetry inspires human hea...

( Photo of Barack Obama and Michelle Obama by George Burns and Harpo Studios ) Until late Sunday evening on May 1, 2011, the big news in discussions focused on President Barack Obama throughout the weekend was that he and First Lady Michelle Obama were scheduled to appear on the Oprah Winfrey show on May 2. Then TV journalists interrupted regular television broadcasts at approximately 10:45 p.m. with the news that al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden had been killed and President Obama himself came on the air about an hour later to confirm the news and provide details on the end of a quest for justice that has taken nearly a full decade to achieve since September 11, 2001. Delivering an address that evoked the unhealed “gaping hole” left in the heart of Americans following 9/11 along with the heightened sense of patriotic unity that followed, Obama made his purpose for being on television at such an odd hour clear from the beginning: “Tonight I can report to the American people and to t...