Your good graces

Your good graces

Lord, accept me as a gift.
I'm all wrapped up in myself;

the measure of everything
and still the world doesn't fit.

I should stop thinking of myself.
I should stop thinking of You

and how to worm my way
into Your good graces;

abandon efforts to gain
advantage and win the prize;

fall back on my groping, inchoate heart.
Be who I am.  What a concept!

Ignorant, vulnerable, mute and motionless,
weathered down to the bone.

O, but spiritual poise like that,
surrender like that,

faith of that measure
come at the heavy price

of all my intrinsic props and illusions -
my presumed mobility, autonomy, merit and clout.

O child of God, Meher said, "Want what I want."
But, o pilgrim . . . the Godman wants for nothing.

                             

In the wake of Your silence

In the wake of Your silence

Your image in the neem tree
outside Mehera's window,

sort of a toss-away miracle -
like a chip falling where it may -

a goodbye kiss after dropping
Your coat - obvious, irrefutable.

Not so obvious, irrefutable always -
Your handiwork, patterns You left

in the wake of Your silence
and non-teaching

about how the game works,
how it should be played;

about Your constant companionship.
Not so certain, evident as the tree

but there for the ear, eye, heart and brain
to imagine, to accept, more or less on faith,

here and there, Your mark
as a signpost, a milestone, a roadblock;

as a prodding, sweet succor, a timely cue;
as a kiss - Your silent, intimate assurance.

O child of God, not a sparrow falls
contrary to His plan and will.

   

Our cloven hearts

Our cloven hearts

A fire in the joy; a fire in the grief;
a fire in the salt of our tears,

the chafe of our fetters;
a flame at the end

of our ever-shortening fuse -
there's a burning every moment,

our blood pushed and pressured
through its circuitous, destined path.

To seek within, the longing for God,
moving through our each

unique and curious lives,
the inner urgency and a goad

to turn us from the dream,
we need only dip our torches

into the ever-present, ever-burning
flame of our error, in the caldron

of our cloven hearts, the ubiquitous,
ever-present fire of our exile.

O child of God, longing for God is the blood-deep
remembrance of an ancient and abandoned placidity.

                 

In the chilling dusk

In the chilling dusk

In the chilling dusk, how sweet the flame
upon this fearsome path I trek;
how beautiful becomes Your name

coming to the end of another game
where flesh and spirit intersect.
In the chilling dusk, how sweet the flame,

inherent fears to breach and shame
the impregnable walls which I erect;
how beautiful becomes Your name

to move beyond the qualms and blame,
the twisted illusions the mind projects.
In the chilling dusk, how sweet the flame.

Love envisioned and beseeched the same;
remembrance the daunted heart protects -
how beautiful becomes Your name

to celebrate the grace by which You came,
Your form on which to dote, reflect.
In the chilling dusk, how sweet the flame.
How beautiful becomes Your name.

                        (Unpublished)

LePage visit, Southeast Gathering - (photos by Debbie Finch, Michael Ivey and others)

Charlie Gard'ner

Bob and Robin

The cross on the hill

Brunch with the LePage's in Athens
 



Margie at talent show

Bill LePage and Naosherwan Ansar

At the waterfall

Lily Finch

Caleb Darnell

SJ and Caleb

On the path

Gabe, Brian and Matt

Thom Fortson's The Divine Juggler

Into the woods

Seth and Matt

The cross from the dining area

Azita

Thayer tosses a beanbag

Ray

Brian

Elvis (Damian)



SJ, Debbie and Brian rocking at the SEG

 

The song of Meher

The song of Meher                                                                                

As a child, like a bird in a cage, everywhere I went, I took Jesus

and the song of Jesus with me but, the world easily crushed

and scattered that cage; the bird flew and the song I heard no more.

Until Your song.  Like a bird in a cage, I take You everywhere.

Now that cage is coming apart, not from the crush of the world

but, from the inside out, the bird and its song too deep,

too large, too strong, too universal for the cage to hold.

What once had meaning, now has three meanings

a thousand meanings, multifarious, ever-shifting

and the whispering love song within

echoes from the bars and rafters

of this realm’s farthest reaches.

O child of God, let the song of Meher

free you from that bone-ribbed cage.

                     

This marvelous deception

This marvelous deception                                                                     

Each moment of this realm drenched

in sweet, sorrowful parting.

I opt for the inherent and inevitable

dilemma of serving two masters,

savoring the seductive illusion beyond each gate

of not being a slave to either house.

There exists an intoxicating glamour

where essence meets dust; where essence meets dust,

though insubstantial and tinged with sorrow.

Frantically we grasp and cling,

in the impetuous moment, seemingly, to the only

chance we might ever have for a taste of heaven.

O child of God, weep for this marvelous deception.

Here is the place for tears.

Inarticulate Truth

Inarticulate Truth

Love, You've come and gone,
the mystery ever deepening;

dropped in, kissed and hovered,
glided, flitted like an angel;

buried like a treasure,
an intractable seed in the stony soil.

Countless discourses, teaching stories,
elucidations and admonitions

and we're no deeper satisfactorily
into the mystery than before,

Your tangible, sensual advent
fading now into myth and history,

into the culling of the gist
and the choosing up of sides.

After a lifetime of frank,
genuine, animate Example,

the mystery has only deepened.
We're no nearer (it seems) to hearing

or bearing the inarticulate Truth
of Who You really are.

O child of God, Meher Baba best
explained Himself in eloquent, holy silence.

                 

Of the eternal

Of the eternal

The Gita says, what is born must die.
And as the bodies pile up,

our noses continually rubbed in the dust,
we begin to tremble before such a truth.

Yet, we are made also of the eternal
and therein a subtle assurance lies -

what is born must die -
the temporal self, born of ignorance,

vainly asserting its sovereignty
through numberless lifetimes and deaths -

by the same stark truth
must someday die ... eternally

while the God part of us,
the part never born ...

can never die.
Can never die.

O child of God, take note of death
only as a harbinger of life eternal.