Spoon-fed
Mostly
alone these days
but
I don’t feel lonely.
The
Friend is at my elbow,
peering
over my shoulder.
My
Companion, my Sole Provider,
He
sees to my needs.
Everything
that comes to me,
comes
through Him.
It’s
all medicine – sometimes bitter,
sometimes
sweet; intoxicating
or
brutally sobering.
Spoon-fed
as if to a toddler.
O
child of God, Baba said, ‘to know Me
as I really am, become
a child at heart’.
Gardens
of surrender
There
remains a question within the heart,
until by
grace, the Beloved One answers – “Yes”.
The
Christ roamed this inhospitable earth.
Can He
survive the remote regions of your heart?
Fly
home, lover of God,
like an
arrowhead of geese on the blue horizon.
Let this
river of illusion flow through empty hands.
There is
only one hand to grasp.
Let Him
lead you through beautiful gardens of surrender;
where all your heroes have walked
before,
waiting
for you now with open arms.
O child
of God, will you enter the garden
or
choose to linger a few thousand lifetimes more?
Judge
God
Routinely,
through my keyhole view,
(crouched
behind the barricaded door),
I
judge myself and others quite harshly,
and
in doing so, judge God
(and
find Him lacking).
Judging
God
from
my own trepidation
rather
than doing my best
to
love Him, His Creation
and
all His children just as they are;
rather
than quelling my rebellion
and
surrendering my will
to
His incalculable superiority –
not
from a motive of salvation but of sacrifice.
O
child of God, the beginning of divine love
is faith in the ultimate
benevolence of God.
Childish
things
Maybe
we’ve outgrown our playthings;
the
borders of our fenced-in yard.
Maybe
our tastebuds have grown stale
with
sweetness, our treats no longer a treat.
The
swing in the backyard goes
back
and forth, up and down.
Our
stick horse takes us round and round,
round
and round – and we end up nowhere.
We
hesitate to try the latch on the gate
to
seek a new adventure.
This
is the only world we’ve ever known.
Everything
else is just a rumor.
Safer
to return again and again
to
our familiarities;
to
try to squeeze from our weathered toys
new
bits of joy and enchantment.
O
child, perhaps it is time (as the scriptures say)
to put away childish things –
to
step beyond the boundaries of your known world.
