Tuned to the One, Even the Homeless Find a Home

Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa

This is the Rahao, and it is a gentle command from the soul to itself: Sing the Sweet Praises of the Lord, O my soul, sing the Sweet Praises of the Lord. The doubling is tender insistence — sing, my soul, sing — and the praises are called sweet, mithe, because remembering the One is not a duty to be endured but a sweetness to be tasted. The soul coaxes itself toward what will gladden it.

And the refrain's second line is one of the most comforting in all these shabads: attuned to the True One, even the homeless find a home. Nithaave thaau — a home for the homeless, a place for the placeless. To be tuned to the One is to find a home that does not depend on any house — a belonging that the friendless, the displaced, the lost can have as fully as anyone. For a raag so full of souls aching, withering, searching for their Beloved, this is a profound assurance: no soul is too homeless, too far outside, too without-a-place to find a home in the One. Tune yourself to the True One — sing the sweet praises — and you who had no home discover you had one all along. It is the perfect key for the shabad: the soul singing itself toward a home that the most homeless can enter.