The Second Station
of the Seventeenth Word1
Cry not out at misfortune, O wretch, come, trust in God!
For know that crying out compounds the misfortune and is a great error.
* * *
Find misfortune’s Sender, and know it is a gift within gift, and pleasure.
So leave crying out and offer thanks; like the nightingale, smile through your tears!
If you find Him not, know the world is all pain within pain, transience and loss.
So why lament at a small misfortune while upon you is a worldful of woe?
Come trust in God!
Trust in God! Laugh in misfortune’s face; it too will laugh.
As it laughs, it will diminish; it will be changed and transformed.
Know, O arrogant one, happiness in this world is in abandoning it.
To know God is enough. Abandon the world; all things will be for you.
To be arrogant is total loss; whatever you do, all things will be against you.
So both states demand abandoning the world here.
Abandoning the world is to regard it as God’s property, with His permission,
in His Name;
If you want to do trade, it lies in making this fleeting life eternal.
If you seek yourself, it is both rotten and without foundation.
If you seek the world outside, the stamp of ephemerality is upon it.
That means there is no value in taking it; the goods in this market are all rotten.
So pass on; the sound goods are all lined up beyond it.
The pieces in this Second Station resemble poetry, but they are not poetry. They were not put into verse intentionally. They rather took on that form to a degree due to the perfect order of the truths they express.