Ardent
inarticulacy
My
Lord is the ancient, unspoken Word.
I
am infatuated with the common tongue.
All
poems are a description of this earthly realm.
This
realm is naught but a description of Reality.
Meher
Baba is the Truth.
That’s
why He stopped speaking.
Each
night I curl up with my dictionary,
thumb
through its assorted
definitions
and descriptions,
delve
into my trusty thesaurus;
quietly
roam the contours of my extensive vocabulary.
Words
on paper. Words on the screen.
How
can I not be infatuated with words?
They
are the nearest thing I have to His silence
and
I only become silent myself when His Truth
brushes
up against me and I am robbed of speech.
O
child of God, how loquacious you have become
in
your ardent inarticulacy.
(painting
by Joe DiSabatino)
Another
fine mess
Words
never contain the truth –
it
pours right through them
splattering
onto the immaculate page.
But
I am not yet comfortable with silence
which
feels too much like
the
loneliness leading up to death.
You
were silent in Your Onlyness.
I
have only words to offer.
You
were silent in Your Wholeness.
I
am not silent because I am not whole,
habitually
voicing my words
of
praise and complaint
for
yet another fine mess
You
seem to have gotten us into.
O
child of God, another collection of words from you.
When
will you be struck dumb by your own presumption?
(drawing
by Rich Panico)
Mainstay
Daily
I recite the Prayer of Repentance,
asking
God’s forgiveness for my sins
though
I long ago became convinced
that
God’s pardon has always been there,
our
trespasses being indelibly woven
into
the fabric of our fate and being.
So
why were we assigned this prayer?
Perhaps,
for the blessing inherent
in
reciting a prayer composed
by
the Avatar of the age; perhaps,
to
be blessed by the intimacy of communion;
to
be blessed for our daring attempts
to
align our souls with our Maker
rather
than with our selves;
to
be blessed by our efforts to regain
sure
footing through a contrite heart.
O
child of God, sin (and its forgiveness)
is a mainstay of
God’s interplay with His creation.
When
You pray
The
hope of heaven and the fear of hell –
a
carrot-and-stick approach
to
our trek from darkness to Light,
the
great Mystery luring us nearer
to
the Truth than our mind and senses
can
take us in their fixation
upon
this outward, illusory realm.
Our
past impressions (per Meher),
are
the present obstacles
barring
our way from the surrender
of
a one-pointed reliance
wholly
and solely upon God.
And
with true surrender
comes
the Real knowledge
that
our most egregious blasphemy
is
the one great Truth –
that
neither God, nor anything other
than
God, exists outside of Who we are.
O
child, when you pray to God,
you are praying to your
Self.
