A
most holy pledge
I
wish I could be content
with
the repetition of Your name.
My
heart is willing
but
my mind is willful,
fixed
in its old habit of ruling the roost,
of
being the forward scout
making
sure every bridge
I
cross can bear the weight.
My
mind doesn’t easily relinquish its authority
nor
abandon its routine sabotage of my heart.
But
I lose You in the repetition of Your name.
I
lose my place in the monologue it becomes.
And
when You grant me some incongruity,
some
paradox to explore, I am off on an adventure
that
very often ends up in a poem.
This
poetry is my remembrance, my meditation,
a
most holy pledge of my faithfulness
until
the moment the two become One.
O
child of God, how overwhelming it is
to picture myself as
a pen held in the Master’s hand.
From
the inside out
God
is a magician with nothing up His sleeve.
Creation
is pulling a rabbit out of a hat
with
no rabbit, no hat and no magician.
Loving
God, apparently,
is
a state of absolute non-attachment;
existence
without perception of it,
annihilation
without unconsciousness;
consciousness
without self.
Oneness
is Love without an object or a recipient,
loving
God from the inside out; from the inside out.
Love
for God is the non-existence of the self;
the
non-existence comprised of everything.
O
child of God, how foolish to attempt
a description of the
Indescribable.
Holy
ground
Ah,
the ephemerality (per Meher) of existence!
At
times a river, a quagmire, a ruse, a nightmare,
far
removed from the Real Existence.
Yet
in our prayers we do not plead for God
to
awaken us from the dream,
but
to make it a better dream,
one
nearer to our fancy, more suitable to our nature –
this
dream ever-shifting, ever drifting downstream,
as
we follow in its wake, no wheel or rudder
in
our grasp and we lose our faith
or
find it eviscerated; abandoning God
for
the dream itself, blaming Him
for
not answering our prayers
when
it is the dream that fails us.
Our
one escape from this ages-old spell
is
to allow the Awakener
to
rouse us from our slumber,
free
us from illusion,
to
establish in us the Reality of God’s love
for
however long forever turns out to be.
O
child of God, gently, gently wend your way
downstream until your
reach Holy ground.
My
fix
Sorting
through the gathered letters
of
my elder years, near the frayed
end
of my rope. Words are my fix.
Death
of self, recommends my Lord.
Family
and friends gathered around, yes!
Until
then, faith is my fix. It will be ‘til
the end.
(Got
to have my fix.)
Abandon
all hope, He said,
ye
who enter here. (Poetry is the balm;
Faith
is my fix.) Helpless and hopeless
before
my Lord. Humility can’t be faked.
(Poetry
is the balm. Words are my fix.)
Sincerity
is the ticket. Got to have my fix.
O
various comrades! Words are my fix.
Faith
is my fix. Until I am safely beyond
all
need for solace. Got to have my fix.
O
child of God, how fortunate you are,
surrounded by heralding
angels in your latter days.
