The only game in town                                                                      
 
Side with the virtuous; battle the others.
Fight the good fight.
 
It’s all part of the game
and it’s the only game in town.
 
Shake your fist; speak truth to power. 
It’s all part of the game
 
and it’s the only game in town.
But when you see the game has you in its grasp,
 
when you see through it, when you give up on it,
when you want desperately out – turn away;
 
cease your resistance – and your participation. 
Turn to the only chance there is
 
(for you and humankind)
and in your deepest humility and helplessness,
 
surrender yourself to the one endeavor worth pursuing,
the one freedom, the one treasure worth the quest.
 
O child of God, this is the game
and it’s the only game in town. 

The whetstone

The whetstone                                                                                 
 
I sought from my Lord daily relief
from the persistent disquiet and shame; 
 
sought absolution and allowance
for my chronic failures,
 
my miserable inadequacy,
until one day my Lord said to me:
 
It was I who hobbled you –
to keep you from straying too far.
 
I cuffed your wrists to keep your hands
out of mischief and folded in prayer.
 
I placed the blinders on – to train your vision
in the one direction you need to go.
 
I plugged your ears to reveal the inner voice.
I built you strange-tongued, odd and solitary
 
to separate you from the seductive crowd
because you belong to no one else but Me.   
 
O child of God, to properly sharpen the blade,
rough and fine-grained must be the whetstone. 

The mercy of His court

The mercy of His court                                                                    
 
If you’re sure of anything in this world,
o child, be sure you are mistaken.
 
When you feel yourself hardening
into one position, take the necessary steps
 
to remove yourself from that easy overlook.
Talk yourself down from the heights
 
to the dust-view of God –
God being not up in heaven
 
but in the field doing His spade-and-hoe work,
seeing everything in His omnipresence
 
at every moment from everywhere.  
To draw nearer to that Truth, o child, and to Him,
 
concede in every judgment,
your ignorance and incapacity;
 
throw yourself and everyone in your ken
upon the celebrated mercy of His court.
 
O child of God, the least, proud thought,
Meher says, veils you from Reality.

(painting by Mark Hodges)

The ancient discrepancy

The ancient discrepancy                                                                    
 
The sun rises, it seems, from the heart,
spilling onto a sky bright sails of hope,
 
invariably to founder upon the day’s living reefs;
tired old bindings to be sure, but ever-new tendrils
 
and the spellbound inertia, the snug-enough shroud.
Evident in the distance between
 
lightning’s flare and the thunder’s roar,
the ancient discrepancy,
 
as I hurtle toward yet another failure –
everyday and the lifetime, the ages-old –
 
the slowly-becoming awareness of how
thoroughly deep go the erected barriers,
 
an integral part, alas, of the structure itself.
The sun rising every morning from the heart
 
to shine upon my impotence and light
beyond me the fair, faraway face of my Savior.
 
O child of God, hopelessness in the New Life
has nothing to do with failure or despair.