Unspeakably blessed

Unspeakably blessed
 
Ask for nothing, said my Lord,
and receive everything.
 
These words I enter
silently upon the screen.
 
Read them the same way.
No requests come
 
from a mouth sealed with gratitude,
a throat crushed with awe.
 
We’ve all been unspeakably blessed.
God made us partial so we should
 
require Him every moment
to complete ourselves
 
and share our pilgrimage
with Him consciously.
 
Coming to the end now
of my particular adventure,
 
I find myself short of everything
but far from having nothing.
 
O child, lament not your perpetual resistance.
God enters through the joints of your armor.

   

(drawing by Rich Panico)

 

Shy of strangers

Shy of strangers
 
When will I stop viewing the world
through the smudged lenses of my spectacles,
 
judging it for what I think it should be
rather than seeing it for what it is?
 
God has ordained what is. I judge what should be –
some imagined convenient alternative,
 
crowning myself as the arbiter of perfection.
Unless I am dethroned in the heart,
 
the Beloved, Who is (per Meher)
shy of strangers, will not take His proper place,
 
neither in my heart nor as the Center and Creator
of my universe, the Whim and the dream.
 
O child of God, your judgment, inside and out,
is compromised by fear and self-absorption.  

        

Self-evidence

Self-evidence
 
Surrender is the offering of open-palmed hands 
no longer raised to clap back at the universe,
 
upheld as a sign of cessation;
of unclenched fists – the end of sparring.
 
The self surrenders not to the world
but to the Maker of the world,
 
then forever more . . . the self is no more   
because it only ever existed
 
as a reaction to the non-self
that surrounds and intimidates it.
 
When the resistance is gone
(per the Masters and Mystics)
 
the emptiness is realized
of both the self and the non-self,
 
replaced by the sudden
Self-evidence of eternal Oneness.
 
O child of God, stack the sandalwood high;
turn yourself into ash and dust.   

                   

My red guitar

My red guitar
 
Life is a bridge, said Jesus
(per the Sufi tradition).
 
Yes, in the shape of an arch and I’m
coming down the far side of it,
 
no longer able to view my starting point.
Build not a house upon it, advised Jesus.
 
Yes, yes, my Lord.  Though, I am leaving behind
my wonderful progeny, family and friends,
 
a half dozen out-of-print books
nobody much wanted to read, my red guitar,
 
a handful of Baba songs others yet sing,
a blog with a thousand-plus poems.
 
The blog might endure near to forever
or be taken down tomorrow.
 
I don’t know how such things work.
It doesn’t matter (per Jesus and Meher Baba).
 
Whatever God has ordained
is okay by me.  I’ll be gone soon enough
 
and He’ll be the One
Who has to deal with it all.
 
O child of God, nothing much matters
in this fever-pitch dream but waking up from it. 

(photo from a video by Debbie Finch, 2015)