Drawing by Rich Panico

Stained by hope

Stained by hope                                                                             

We stand and pray O Parvardigar

with folded hands, quaking hearts

and all the faith and hope we can muster.

We stand and pray and You say

we must shed our hope –

which leaves only our naked faith.

Preserver and Protector of all,

we pray because we suffer

vulnerability and impermanence

and You say our faith is stained

and diluted by our hope.  Yes,

I accept that but for me, not in God.  

My hope and faith is in You.

In the life You gave the world.

I say the prayers You participated in. 

There are no other words left to me

which give more than their meaning --

which give solace and faith and hope.

O child of God, stand before your Father.

Say the prayers, naked and honest as you dare.

Do not bother

Do not bother

Do not bother about believing in Me.
To believe in yourself, be prepared.
Have faith in your own capacity ...

(my Lord told a tentative devotee) --
believe in the longing for Truth you bear.
Do not bother about believing in Me.

One day you'll know My sovereignty --
our destined encounter on the stair.
Have faith in your own capacity.

Follow your heart's constancy.
Search your soul and know Me there.
Do not bother about believing in Me.

Trust your yearning to set you free.
Trust your Self as much as you dare.
Have faith in your own capacity.

God has heard your innermost plea,
your position secured, favored and rare.
Do not bother about believing in Me.
Have faith in your own capacity.

                        (Unpublished)

                                              Drawing by Rich Panico

When hearts fail

When hearts fail 

Gathering my faith to my chest,
tramping toward another fire,

angels hovering not near enough,
perhaps, to smell their lily breaths

but to hear their wings beating the air;

aiming towards my best shot,

a wild and improbable lifeboat,

my Beloved shunting me toward His table –

(if such a table exists among

the misted hopes and myths of men)

by sapping the flavor of every sip and morsel

which does not bear His thumbprint and signature.

Or, am I reading too much into this –

creating for myself a solace,

thin and impalpable as the ghosts

I have long chased,
                               

which routinely plague

all partakers of this reality?

God only knows and He’s keeping mum.

Apparently, its faith He’s after in the interim;

faith, in the end, all He leaves, our fallback

connection when hearts fail to love.

O child of God, you belong to Meher Baba.

You couldn’t leave Him if you tried.

                              

Faith is a wooden sword

Faith is a wooden sword                                                             

Faith is a wooden sword. 

Take it up, o lover, against the ogres

and demons of your dire imaginings,

which (the Masters say)

is the substance of adversity and suffering

and, yet, which bar the way

to your rendezvous

with Who you really are.

Discipline yourself in the art of war.

Labor for the day

you will be handed a sword of steel.

Faith is a leave-taking

from the worldly ranks, a declaration

of allegiance to the King.  O lover,

let your ordinary and inevitable

death and suffering

take on a vital and pointed glory!

Faith is a wooden sword, a testing of the blood.

The essence of faith is surrender.

Pure and ultimate faith:  surrender – and victory.

O child of God, take up your sword

and be faithful to the only worthy One.

                            

                                               Drawing by Rich Panico

Never drenched

Never drenched                                                                            

We know only definitions, strategies

and the strained perversities

of God’s most dynamic and intrinsic Qualities.

Only through hearsay, conjecture and imagination, 

we judge God’s love and mercy and find Him lacking –

while it is our own judging hearts which lack those very virtues –

never drenched, never drenched in the aspects

of infinite, eternal Love and Mercy.

You dropped into this dream.  We demanded explanations –

the Ultimate Reality delivered in dream speech;

justified by dream logic; redeemed in dream dynamics.  

No wonder You sealed Your lips against the notion

Truth can be taught and learned; not realized and lived.  

But, here again, I take Your part, Lord,

against a greater part of the world, offering explanations.

Do I justify You to others or to myself?

O child of God, throw yourself over the cliff.

You nor the world have anything of value to lose.

Sum total

Sum total                                                                                      

Only Kalyan chose to believe the Master,

fetching a lantern for the noonday prayers;

others wanting to believe but left stranded

as the ship sailed, grieved and abandoned.

It’s hard to see the Light; hard to see the darkness,

to put your lips upon the foul and deadly

with no inner assurance of salvation and sweetness,

the universe bearing unholy witness against you.

An absurd, lonely, desperate risk and quest

(He ever describe it otherwise)

to go against the sum total of all you’ve ever known.

O lonely, hopeless seeker of God, only Meher is there

to balance the celestial scales, only Meher, only Meher

inviting you to join Him in His divine madness.

O child of God, run fetch the lantern!

Follow your Lord into the noonday sun.

                                                Drawing by Rich Panico

Pilamai's chair

Pilamai’s chair 

You threw Pilamai’s chair from the moving train

when she refused to occupy it in Your stead.

You revere your feelings of shame, You said,

more than me.  Yes, Beloved, more than You,

I revere the shame of my flesh,

the impertinence of my doubts,

the usurpation of my thoughts and will.

How could it be otherwise?

I have not already surrendered them to You.

For that I am deeply ashamed 

and cling to my shame and not to You.

The great gulf between us is filled with small things –

the petty, the furtive, the vain and paltry. 

What is my life that I should value it?

What would it have been without You?

Dying to shameful desires, I would be Yours

and with You, inseparable, non-dual

and other facile attempts at description

of that which the tongue, eye and ear

are incapable of bearing.

O child of God, the Beloved demands absolute

obedience ... for your glory, for your emancipation.

                             

You yourself

You yourself

Meher in His silence had this to say --
No separation ... lover and Beloved are One.
You are God.  You, yourself are the Way.

God kneels with you when you kneel to pray
and rises with you when prayer is done.
Meher in His silence had this to say --

not only the Avatar dons a coat of clay
to marvel at the stars, to walk beneath the sun --
You are God.  You yourself are the Way.

Turn within, o pilgrim, as the coat begins to fray;
comfort, beyond words, religion offers none.
Meher in His silence had this to say --

You shall embrace your Self on Judgement Day,
your ultimate redemption won.
You are God.  You yourself are the Way.

The path will follow everywhere you stray
'til the bindings of ignorance come undone.
Meher in His silence had this to say --
You are God.  You, yourself are the Way.

                          (Unpublished)

Song link -- Don't You think it's time

Don't You think it's time

Don’t You think it’s time?                                                capo 2 
A                                        D                                      A                            

Don’t You think it’s time         I rid my heart of all these strangers

A                                                   D                                 A                                               

Don’t You think it’s time?       I offered my life without holding back  

                           D    A                        D     A                   D

one thing for myself  to lay it at Your feet, it belongs to You 

           A     D            A                                   

Don’t You think it’s time?         

D                                                                                 A

I know I’ve got to give until nothing but love remains

D                                                                                                       A

but, Darling, You’re the only One with the power to break these chains

       E                                                               D

I’ve grown  weary of this game, I’ve grown weary of this game

A                                                  D                                            A

Don’t You think it’s time         I lived up to the trust that You placed in me

                           D        A                            D              A                               D

all those years ago       when You took my hand          and we climbed that hill?

           A      D           A

Don’t You think it’s time?          

D                                                                              A

I know You’ve promised us suffering is never in vain

D                                                                                              A

but, Darling, You’re the only One with the remedy for this pain

                     E                                                D                                   

I’ve grown  weary of this game, I’ve grown weary of this game.

 

A                                             D                                                  A

Don’t You think it’s time       that we were together     that my lonely soul

                                 D       A                       D          A                      D

found its way back home    never more to roam,      never more to roam   

           A      D           A       D

Don’t You think it’s time?    (repeat twice)

                                    

Too much like death

Too much like death                                                                        

You lived in silence.  I can’t abide it. 

Too much like death.  Even while

lying motionless and mute in the casket

You’ve so lovingly fashioned for me,

my mind is stubbornly shouting blasphemies,

roaming the known parameters.

I climbed in willingly enough. 

Made myself comfortable. 

I don’t regret it.  But, this protracted interment   

is as stylized and boring as any funeral ever was

and still I haven’t the courage

to clamp down the lid long enough

for You to sink the nails. 

You came not to teach but to awaken.

Lucky for me – because I never seem to learn.

And, instead of holding on to Your damaan,

being dragged pell-mell into the Infinite-Eternal,
I hold tightly to the ragged shirttail

of this wanton, roaring world; the sad

and flustered illusion of my false self.

O child of God, hold your tongue and let

Meher’s silence become your last triumphant shout.

                             

Assortment of blessings

Assortment of blessings                                                               

A lover arriving from the west, the end

of her long quest to meet the Beloved. 

Tomorrow, You said; Eruch protesting –

she’s come so far;  she so wants to see You.

Tomorrow, You said, she will want

to see Me even more. 

In the assortment of blessings You give

is the longing to see You even more –

a fiery, chafing treasure, at times, requiring You

to give nothing or, even, take away.

I squander that treasure daily on heart-strangers

with little or nothing left for the Giver.

I come knocking on Your door, waiting to be

granted admission and are ever turned away,

having not accumulated enough pure longing

to be ushered into Your welcoming arms.

O child of God, the blessings of your Beloved

are dissimilar to the blessings of the world.

                           

                             

Song link -- I heard You call my name

I heard You call my name

D                                       G                         A                          D                    

I heard You call my name       and I turned to find You standing there

                                                 G              A                             D            G

and through the tears that came I gazed upon Your form as much as I dared

Em                     A                           G             A

then I pledged to follow You       to love and obey

         D                 G                  D            G                        Em                D

and I don’t know how       this faithless world        keeps getting in my way

D                                       G                          A                          D                    

I heard You call my name      and I spied You there among the crowd

                                         G                  A                         D        G

when Your eyes met mine I could not help but cry Your name aloud

Em                             A                  G                   A

so many strangers between us        getting in my way

         D                 G                  D            G                            Em                D

and I don’t know how        this faithless world            keeps leading me astray

G A                   D         G                     A            D

O my time will come.  One day those veils will part. 

G                      A                  D           G

You’ll call my name, You’ll call my name

              Em                                     A

and I’ll answer You with all of my heart

G A                   D          G                     A            D

O my time will come.  One day you’ll give the Word

G                   A                          D                G

and I’ll leave everything, O I’ll leave everything

    Em                                        D

to follow You, follow You, my Lord

D                                       G                 A                 D                    

I heard You call my name        standing atop a distant hill

                                  G                 A                                   D         G

and I ran to meet You but when I looked again You were farther still

Em                   A                            G                    A

and I longed to follow You     and leave straightaway

               D                 G           D            G                 Em                D    G

(1) and I don’t know how this faithless world keeps leading me astray

         D                 G          D            G                  Em                D     G

(2) I don’t know how this heartless world keeps getting in my way (repeat 1)

Wrens and sparrows

Wrens and sparrows                                                                       

I write my poetry on a crust of bread

I found in the bottom of my pouch,

dropping crumbs along the path

for the wrens and sparrows.

I won’t be coming back

this way and no one will follow

into this particular plot of trees.

The woods are deep.  I’ll write

as long as the light holds out.

God illumines the path

only one step at a time

and my own torch has been thrown down.

It’s like a crust of bread –

the moon above the horizon.

My mortal existence is a crust of bread.

This poem is dedicated

to the wrens and sparrows.

I wish I had more to give.

O child of God, venture where there is blitheness    

in dissolution; unalloyed bliss in obliteration.

                            

                  

Joy in the pain

Joy in the pain                                                                                 

It happened again – the path 

disappeared beneath my feet.

Where is there to stand   

in this ephemeral, illusory world?

No solidity, no weight –

no purpose or meaning.

Then, why not float through, my Lord asks, 

light and free as a feather?  

Because of the pain, I answer. 

There’s joy – but, always, pain.

 

There is pain even in the joy 

but never joy in the pain.

That’s why I’ve come, my Lord said.

To bring you joy in the pain.

O child of God, live for your Beloved

and become the purpose you seek.

                

Journeyman's cloak

Journeyman’s cloak                                                                        

Long you have wandered the desert.

Enter now the palace of the King.

His only requirement –

remove your filthy coat.

Possessions, He does not demand,

nor the servitude of your body;

nor must the torch of your wisdom

and awareness be extinguished.

He demands only that illusory cloak

to which you so fanatically cling, be shed –

your journeyman’s cloak,

ragged, encrusted, malodorous –

cloak of foreign alliance, of feigned separation;

cloak of provisional power and false dominion.

The King and the desert await you, pilgrim,

on either hand.  It’s your decision to make.

O child of God, the bargain was struck ages ago.

Take it now . . . or leave it.

                             

Borrowed clay

Borrowed clay                                                                                  

There’s a path which must be walked.

There’s no choice about it; no turning back.

A footbridge to be crossed –          

high, narrow, pendulous; a candle

held before the chest, cupped hand

and cautious steps protecting its flame.

In the heart, there’s a wine cup, brimful,

to be balanced precisely  

lest a drop spills in vain.  There’s a prayer –

heartfelt, word for word -- which must be said

as the candle is protected and the cup is balanced;

a silence to be kept intact as the prayer is recited

and the cup is balanced, the candle protected –

a silence pure, immense as the silence

Meher left after returning the borrowed clay.

And there are various outward, 

karmic circumstances which must come together 
like stars in alignment and agreement.  

Footbridge, candle,wine cup, prayer, 
silence, stars and circumstance . . . .

O child of God, there is more to the path

the farther along you go.

                          

                                             Painting -- East/West Gathering by Laura Darnell

Fishes and loaves

Fishes and loaves                                                                           

It’s not like baking bread

from grannie’s recipe or shaping

and assembling furniture.

It’s more like the tracking of a deer

or catching a fish – the application

of a randomly accumulated expertise,

recognizing favorable conditions,

combing likely environs. 

It’s like the setting of a hook,

the ensuing improvisation,

gauging the familiar give and take

before landing the prize.

And then, maybe, offering it to the fisher of men,

Who, along with some of those methodically

baked loaves, may use it to feed the multitudes

or, maybe, not.  It’s no concern of mine,

lying belly full on a hillside, drowsy with wine,

my allotment taken off the top,

my Beloved’s form in full view,

His voice a sweetness in my ears.

O child of God, be ever vigilant for bread, wine

and that sudden, sharp tug upon the line.