Lifetime
costume
I
am foreign to myself; it’s not me –
the
name under which I am registered.
Myself
and I have never been introduced,
as
far as I can remember.
I
stepped onto the wheel
and
it started spinning.
An
old man awakens each morning
and
puts on his lifetime costume.
Quite
a load to carry, heavier each day.
But
I am not the one to bear that weight.
What
am I doing for the rest of my life?
I
never had one. I remember some sort of
dream.
With
no past, how can I have a future?
How
could I have ever existed
if
I will one day cease to exist? Who is it
that
accepts this illusion as Real?
O
child of God, who speaks this way –
inside your head in
the only language you know?
The
Lantern
When
the wick is lowered
and
the flame blown out,
its
glow reappears in the stars above
which
have always been there
but
were eclipsed by the lantern’s glow.
When
the young lad ceased to be Merwan
He
became the Everything
which
is always everywhere
but
is hidden by individuality.
When
He returned as the Chosen One
He
bore the Everything within Himself.
And
when His individuality was again dropped
He
returned to the Everything
and
the Everything returned to Him.
O
child of God, what we have here
is an attempted
description of the Indescribable.
A
passing fancy
Make
yourself scarce,
advised
the Mystics and Masters
before
each moved on,
bequeathing
to the world
their
enigmatic testimonies
and
their inviolable inspiration.
O
to become nothing and no one!
But
its left up to me to accomplish the task;
left
up to me and my karma, of course;
that
is to say, me and my Maker,
me
and the whole Grand Scheme –
to
abandon the past, eschew the future
and
dwell pristinely in between,
becoming
the one who in truth
I
have always been – a momentary figure,
a
flickering image upon the screen
without
substance or Reality and thus
to
free myself from the character in the play
while
remaining an anonymous extra
milling
about in the crowd.
O
child of God, you will be nearer to the goal
when you fulfill your
role as a passing fancy.
Stand
in the same silence
I
am a crooked man who lives in a crooked house
built
upon the shifting sands of this old tidewater town.
When
my neighbors gather, ask me to explain myself,
I’m
at a loss – there’s not a single motive left
to
pull from my bag of tricks; no excuses,
except
maybe, God made me do it.
But
many of them don’t believe in God
and
the ones who do, don’t believe in God the way I do.
They
picture Him somewhere
on
the other side of the galaxy
rather
than moving amongst them
on
my unkempt lawn.
I
no longer offer explanations –
none
of them speak my language.
And
when they leave me to myself, only I believe
that
it is God who lifts my hand to wave goodbye.
O
child of God, stand in the same silence
Your Saviour employed
to awaken the world.
