God says (in part of this poem):
I am independent of all purity and impurity,
Of all laziness and all diligence in worship.
I haven’t ordered my worship to profit from it,
But to bestow a benefit upon My servants.
I am not sanctified by their glorification:
It is they who become sanctified and pure.
I do not consider the tongue and its words;
I look at the spirit and character.
I look into the heart to see if it’s evil;
The heart’s the essence, words only the accident:
The accident’s accessory, the essence is what matters.
How many more phrases, ideas, metaphors, can I stand?
It’s burning I want, true burning! Become burning’s friend!
Fire your soul with the passion of adoration:
Destroy with this fire all thought and expression.
Those who know conventions are of one kind—
Those whose souls and spirits burn are another.— Rumi, Mathnawi [via]
To mix metaphors:
God thirsts for your love, not because you are His waters of everlasting life, but because you are the thirst, He the waters. He needs you only because you need Him.
— Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen [via]