Green pastures
Jesus left the ninety-nine to find the one lost
and maybe that one lost, if its story be told,
was the only one not left behind, but truly
found, scooped up in the Savior’s arms.
You have to get lost to be found, I think.
You have to lose the flock,
go out on your own two shaky legs
into the dark fields, trading all there evidently is
for all that might be, short of any real evidence.
Thinking maybe of finding your own way if you must,
but not really caring anymore,
just tired to the bone of the painful,
the false and fleeting and at that moment
of utter despair and defeat, maybe
you get lifted up, or you die trying – and perhaps,
you get carried away, led – not back into the fold but safely
released onto those metaphorical green pastures
to fatten you up before your next adventure.
O child of God, to escape the counterfeit,
surround yourself with the Mystery.
Regarding the mystery
This language which I do not speak,
lately comes to me by way
of the great mystery no one comprehends
and so I remain silent mostly – better not
to understand, nor speak, this wisdom
than the human, understandable points
held forth daily, apparently far from any truth –
the constant parroting of love and mercy,
courage and virtue without the least authenticity
or reality behind the uttered words.
So perhaps better mere silence, refraining
from complicity, regarding the mystery
and its tenacious beauty, so terrible
and unimaginable – this Word, this God
unutterable on every human tongue,
this purported Oneness,
this homecoming along the inexhaustible,
unfathomable, inexpressible Way.
O child of God, you regret your silence
and then you regret your speech.
For Him also
Time apparently non-existent before God
premiered His kaleidoscopic Creation,
breaking Himself into pieces – near and far,
large and small, lover and Beloved;
space emerging with time like conjoined twins;
color not existing until He broke
the Light of Himself over His own knee;
movement not existing until the fragments
swam to each other, embraced and kissed.
Separating Himself; leaving us
to make our own sense of His strewn
bits, textures, shapes and colors.
For us all apparently to exist and know ourselves
but for Him also, in relation to us,
for how could Love ever Be without a lover
and how could God ever exist without a
witness?
O child of God, the One became two,
says the old man, then three, then ten thousand.
Yonder
You might have to leave your home
and go yonder; leave your loved ones,
the land of your birth and go yonder;
for the sake of family and friends,
go yonder, yonder, alone,
across the wide meadow;
nothing romantic or remarkable,
just the quiet unfolding of fate
and the winding of the path into the hills
from which comes your strength.
O beloved Lord, you might ask,
or silently require of the impersonal Way –
open Your gate – for nothing else matters
because everything else matters;
because ephemeral beauty, truth and virtue
are beautiful and virtuous and true;
because Love is majestic and Its own validation.
You might have to leave home and go yonder,
yonder, yonder on a singular path
until God and It, the Life and the Way,
are no longer out of grasp
but in your hands and under your feet at last.
O child of God, lonely is the path of Love
and
impersonal the Buddha’s Way.
