Under their trilling
The path of knowledge has
petered out
into a thick pine wood
ripe with scent and birdsong.
Its remainder does not
lie undiscovered up ahead.
It simply goes no
farther.
There’s no key to God’s
door
on my considerable chain
–
a weight I’ve accumulated
for years.
There’s no lock on God’s
door;
most likely there’s no
door at all out this far.
What I should do now is
toss these keys,
scatter the last of my
bread crumbs
for the gathered,
guileless birds
and await my Beloved
under their trilling –
hand outstretched but no
longer for begging,
merely waiting, do or
die, for Him
to take my hand and lead
me home.
O child of God, leave it
– your salvation
has always been entirely
up to Him.
(Drawing by Rich Panico)
Of stars and stones
When they plant my stone
on the green hillside
nothing earth-shattering
will occur –
the ocean and the stars
will function as ever before
once my little boat slips
under the waves.
Often I listen to the
world now as if I’m in a casket.
Listen to my thoughts as
if they were wind in the trees.
Listen beyond the
palpable noises,
beyond the stream of my
thoughts
to the silence underlying
every sound, inside and out.
The silence of stars and
stones. The silence of the blue sky
behind the clouds. The silence of death.
I listen to – whether
real or imagined –
the silence my Lord saved
up for a lifetime
and left for me and others
to listen to in our loneliness.
O child of God, why not,
asked Meher,
consider yourself already
dead?
God-sent
If my virtue requires a
villain
I can be sure that I’m
duping myself,
dabbling in duality with
a quality
that belongs to another
realm.
True virtue is God-sent,
borne
of benevolence, humility
and equanimity.
It breaks us down –
nearer to dust and ashes.
Virtue that lifts us
above others
is a subtle self
promotion, an empty grand gesture
that for whatever good it
does,
adds to the darkness, the
ignorance
and hypocrisy of
ourselves and the world.
O child of God, in the
depths of a ruse
nothing is ever
completely what it seems.
When you look for God
The path seems more like
a river now
than a road – I’m being
pulled down it.
I haven’t the choice even
of opening or shutting my
eyes.
God, through the Law,
does that.
The river wends where it
will,
flowing also through my
mind –
torrents of thoughts,
emotions, moods
often turgid with the
impedimenta of fear.
Attachment is not only
about desire, apparently,
it’s about existence – my
existence. It seems
I am a witness not a
participant of my journey.
Thus I am bound and thus
I am infinitely free.
Realization of that
freedom is my destiny (I am told).
My search (which is not
mine to claim)
is an unfolding of that
destiny –
ever fated to seek and
never find God
for I do not exist apart
from Him.
O child, when you look
for God, Rumi said,
God is in the look of
your eyes.
