Room for God

Room for God

Humility is hard to come by 
(and I have so much to be humble about).

A toothless lion -- pride; a gnawing rat.
Brave men have no pride;

even a humble man's courage
is not there when grasped;

a humble man -- he's no hero . . . nor saint. 
Humility and its poverty

leave room for nothing else
except, maybe, God

to enter when the walls are rubble,
where a man stands

naked and armless, without pride or courage.
Then, maybe, there's room for God.

O child of God, Meher's love, so freely given,
apparently, demands every last thing in return.

My baffled heart

My baffled heart

The heart is a seed buried in the chest
due for an eventual flowering

or grit, perhaps, for a future pearl.  Or, say,
the heart is a bird, its singing muted

by layers of flesh.  I tell repeatedly my sons
I love them lest they forget, lest they doubt;

lest they drift away, my throat bearing
a mere trembling resemblance to the truth

my baffled heart is unable to express.
You wore, o wordless One, Your heart

invariably on Your sleeve; Your love,
Your presence, speechless and palpable,

awakened in Your lovers' chests; in their own hearts.
Such were the human changes You wrought.

Long after the husk and flesh were shed,
Your naked seed buried in that rocky soil,

Your presence, Your love awoke
in my stone tomb, my human, baffled heart --

Your love -- wordless, eloquent, shared
across the chasm, through the lover's flesh,

lest I didn't know; lest I had forgotten; lest
I should ever doubt and become estranged.

O child of God, hold on to the silence
in which real things are given and received.

                    

And the Word was God

And the Word was God

Small word -- god.  Like a grunt,
a groan breaking from our throats.

Capitalized, modified by the pious. 
Used profanely by sinners.

Forgive us, God, this small begrudged word
wedged into our vocabulary as an afterthought.

Words of worldliness: pleasure, flesh, riches,
savored by our mouths: luxury, lavish; sexuality,

sumptuousness, triumph, lasciviousness . . . .
O pilgrim, take god -- that hard nugget of a word

and nurture it in your core
until it breaks you open,

breaks your world apart,
until a tree from its seed grows,

stretches, brushes leaves and branches
against the farthermost ends

of your thoughts, depths, faith,
experience and imagination.

O child of God, in the beginning was the Word . . .
and the Word was God.

                           (Unpublished)

A nod and a wink

A nod and a wink

How ya' doin'? I ask friends,
acquaintances, total strangers --

a form of greeting, no reply necessary.
No one knows the answer anyway.

Just the asking -- throat to ear,
saying, we're all on the same ship,

surrounded and overwhelmed in our frailty,
our mortality, ignorance and ephemerality

by the Infinite, the Unpredictable and the Eternal.
We pass each other on the bridge

and ask , how ya' doin'?
The answer's always the same --

I'm alive.  Surviving; on the edge of terror
and catastrophe; skating

this depthless, unfathomable sea,
breathing moment to moment as freely as possible

in this inexplicable, fearsome
and wondrous existence of which

we have no real knowledge or conception.
We have only our faith and each other.

O child of God, how ya' doin?
Answer with a nod and a wink.

                    

Love interest

Love interest 

Existence You compare to a motion picture
with God playing every role.

You, of course, are the love interest.
When Your face hits the screen

every pulse quickens.
Let the storylines get too sad, predictable

and You are thrown into the mix,
to stir up the plot by espousing

the most difficult task in existence.
Love God, You say.  Love God.

Again and again, You enter the picture
to round out and soften

God's rough edges, awaken
the human heart to love.  To love.

You make it easy -- so that we might begin
our arduous approach to God;

to love God, to become God,
to become God the Beloved.

O child of God, impossible to love the self;
next to impossible to love the Self.

                

In lieu of silence

In lieu of silence

In lieu of silence, I offer this poem.
In lieu of surrender, I offer this prayer.

Unable with my whole heart to praise You,
I compose these poems of praise,

mitigated by inquiry and complaint;
by words themselves.  In lieu of conviction,

I assiduously examine and guard my faith,
lest a wall should crumble, a foundation crack.

In my lack of poise,
I lay at Your feet my desperation

and because my obedience is so shaky,
I repeat constantly my repentances

for the breaking of my high-minded vows.
I can't live up to Your measure

but, You are the measure.  It is You
for Whom I break my own silence,

reaching out of my shell with petitions,
questions, grievances and grief.

You are the Hub around which my thoughts,
my being revolve in this mad, whirling experience

in which I find myself and hope,
one day, to lose myself and find You.

O child of God, when a poem breaks your heart
you know you've moved a smidgen closer to the core.

                       

Song link -- Living in me

Living in me

The illusion of God's absence

The illusion of God's absence

The rich have their diamonds and pearls;
the poor -- the moon and stars;

the pauper emerges from a cramped hovel,
peers upward into a starry night

going on forever.  Upon every doorstep --
the infinite sky, the eternal now,

filling us up everywhere we turn
upon the spectrum of agony to ecstasy.

The Lord is our shepherd we shall not want.
Every brimful moment -- we shall not want.

No one is slighted; no one goes without.
Our inheritance -- our just and proper due --

life in minutia, in all extremes,
the essence and price of being human.

Preference creates the illusion of want.  Judgement
and desire create the illusion of God's absence.

O child of God, cultivate indiscriminate gratitude;
purchase Oneness with the jewel of desirelessness.

O child of God, in the stone's crevice
shall bloom the perfect rose.

                    

The silence of Your wine

The silence of Your wine

My words fall upon deaf ears
so I tap them out; like an old movie,

more apparent in black and white.
Perhaps, following Your lead, I hope

for an intimacy through my fingers
unattainable through throat and tongue.

We are all tired of words, You say.
But, words from You have become my comfort.

I'm ready, o Lord, to abandon
this conversation and communion

which sustains my faith and yet
increases my thirst; but, in their stead,

fill my throat, o Lord, with the unchallenged,
unforced, unutterable silence of Your wine.

O child of God, there's no one to hear but God,
so you write poetry.

                         

Meher Baba with Meherwan Jessawalla