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                        (Unpublished)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)