The preliminary beauty
Aren’t we beautiful? Aren’t we
brave?
We try so hard
to please our Lord, to serve Him,
to give of ourselves, to connect with others.
We are not very good at it
but doesn’t that strengthen our resolve?
My very young granddaughter
is just learning to use her fingers.
Grasping clumsily at objects.
Trying to fathom again and again
the how and why of it.
She’s not very good at it,
but it’s the beauty of her efforts,
the concentration, determination
and my already knowing she will one day
use her hands with such perfect grace
to express her love, to give and receive,
to serve and please her Lord.
O child of God, the more you see the preliminary beauty
the nearer you are to the viewpoint of God.
Bullock cart
A lame man riding through the dark
in the bed of a bullock cart, a pummeling
with each pothole, road rut;
the destination vague and remote.
No stopping, no turning back. A perfect One
holds the reins, His mere presence
making the journey bearable,
His authority fleshing out
certain ancient stories
of the valiant and persistent.
Meher gave the lepers comfort, not healing.
The cure was there already, in the process of time,
in the death of diseased bodies and the taking
of new ones. Comfort was His
gift.
Nursing my wounds in the dark,
I see clearly now my own eventual cure
somewhere beyond the thumps of time and distance,
assured by the promise and nature of the malady,
as the old cart shudders, rumbles along, winding its way
towards the dawn and those inevitable, far-away gates.
O child of God, Meher says every bump in the road
is a shedding and a shaping of your eventual perfection.
Think of Noah
Start your own project, Rumi advised.
As absurd as Noah laboring daily
in the sandy shade of the ship’s hulk,
not a drop to show for all his devotion,
his lofty pronouncements and endeavors.
His self-opposition far harder to ignore
than the public’s derision, those habitual lapses
of faith and resolve – empty, arid days,
nights of isolation and confusion,
seductive arguments for capitulation and abandonment.
And doubt! Would it not all come
down
to a great dusty naught? Start your
own project,
Rumi advised, constructed daily –
the ribs of an inward, sturdy vessel
contrary to your own and all apparent
worldly reason, wisdom and evidence.
O child of God, whenever you distrust
your inner God-directed duties, think of Noah.
Graveyard gates
I have come not to teach, said my Lord.
Liberation, apparently, not something you learn how to do.
With this lifetime of accumulated knowledge,
it’s difficult to become a vessel now with a perfectly hollow ring.
There’s an old joke about a drunk
stumbling into an open grave.
I’ve forgotten the punch line. I’ve
dug my own grave;
settled into the bottom, studying the sky.
I can dig no deeper nor climb back to the surface.
I thought the virtue of patience
referred to the length of the journey.
Now I see it only begins
when the path veers from the highway
and enters through the graveyard gates.
O child of God, how stubbornly you cling
to the only thing you know.
