The truth of illusion

The truth of illusion                                                                                  

Moths circle the lamp, hover

and hurtle, attracted to the flame

but, also driven from the midst

of their dark surroundings.

You reach God

when you come to the end of yourself.

You get wise.  It’s the truth of illusion

that shatters, that jades;

the truth of illusion that bores, sates,

disheartens, disenchants.

You rush toward God when God

outshines His surroundings.

When the dark has gobbled you up –

bones and blood.

You rush and flail

and hurl yourself toward the light

when you see there’s nothing

in the darkness worth living for.

O child of God, turn from illusion

toward the way, the truth, the light.

Apparently, fearless

Apparently, fearless                                                                               

Rumi likened the soul to a bird’s beating wings,

propelled toward God by (love’s) expansion

and (fear’s) inevitable, subsequent contraction;

a thrust and recovering –  fear and repugnance,

joy and inspiration and back again in pursuit

of truth and beauty and the leave-taking gamble

of the solitary perch of nestled desire and pleasure,

our final approach being, apparently, fearless –

of a gliding, unalloyed posture, wings stretched to their limit,

braced and unbending, our flight’s path and pattern

determined solely by the play of winds, from beak

to feather beyond our efforts, desire and control.

O child of God, abandon fear and soar

into the holy, awaiting firmament.

A stretch of silence

 A stretch of silence                                                                                

You and I share a room.  I come and go while You remain.

Like sprays of flowers, You add Your silence,

Your darkling mystery, a pinch of unbearable love. 

I add my aching fear, my infidelity and indifference –

continually drawn to the door, darting in and out.  

(There’s always a parade downtown

with a carnival on the outskirts.)

But, also, I’m afraid to be alone with You;

able only to endure for a few moments

at a stretch Your beautiful, lonely silence,

Your seductive, foreign presence,

Your fragrant promise of peace and annihilation. 

O child of God, make Him your constant companion

by exploring  His real and constant presence.

True grit

True grit

God is love ...

but, to express love,

to exercise, exhibit and execute love,

God has to become human.

Coats of flesh must be applied

and not just the Christ,

an illusion of pearl

around the true grit,

every human body making evident love,

existential, empirical and obvious love,

bodies heavenly in the void,

colors in a field of light,

illusory flaws in God's perfection,

making visible our ephemeral selves

where resides the tangible evidence

of God's pure and unfathomably true love.

Chinks and seams, ledges and crevices

in the daunting face, the edifice of perfection

we must scale in our impossibly long

journey to reach heaven.

O child of God!  God is love, Meher said.

And love must love.

God's gift

God’s gift                                                                                                   

Enjoy this moment God has made

knowing full well

you have no right to joy –

not having earned it,

not owning it nor having created it.

It’s a momentary gift you can never possess,

slipping invariably through your fingers.

Endure the suffering moments, too, God gives,

knowing you do not own suffering

and have not earned it.  Knowing it too shall pass.

We pray for joy while the teachings

emphasize the efficacy of suffering.

But God gives neither joy nor pain; God’s gift is life –

the undivided experience and awareness of it –

the ecstasy and horror, beauty and bitterness,

pride and grief, the gentility and brutality of it all.

O child of God, to accept the gift of God,

accept the total, eternal ownership of the Giver.

Humble men

Humble men                                                                                             

I’ve known a few humble men in my time.

Dead now.  They wouldn’t want their names mentioned.

Humility is a fabled hamlet somewhere

up in the mountains no roads lead to.

Not a way of self regard but, regarding the self not at all

or, offhandedly, an afterthought, an offshoot,

treated underfoot as maybe a kid brother.

The self a cumbersome necessity for a while,

an essential nuisance like the cast on a broken leg

to be discarded when wholeness returns.

There’s a natural attraction to the humble,

their emptiness allowing room to unwind, stretch out. 

They exist so minimally, a sense of expansiveness

is engendered in all those fatefully drawn near.

O child of God, humility arrives by an evolutionary process

which cannot be rushed, provoked or overridden.

           

Orb of the heart

Orb of the heart                                                                                     

When the center of the sky was earth,

the movements of planets and stars

seemed erratic; calculations difficult and complex.

The sun took over and flights clicked

more easily into predictable patterns.

And when the center of the sky

became a distant, conjectured,

long-ago point of origin, the earth,

stars and planets began to interact

in calculable and precise ways,

parts of an infinite, well-oiled machine.

As long as that blue, stone cold

orb of the heart is taken to be

the center of the universe,

every outward movement,

every body spinning beyond it

will be judged as erratic and arbitrary,

inexplicable and incalculable.

O child of God, the truth makes things

o-so-much-more simple and clear.

The unfolding answer

The unfolding answer                                                                             

A man of deep faith, just as a man

without faith, asks nothing of God.

Life itself to such a man 

is the unfolding answer to all prayers.

Pain, fright is there – but not anxiety;

loss but not grief;

failure without disappointment;

solitude without loneliness;

death (we are told) without termination.

Perched on the tip of the bow,

a man of faith is serenely poised

to receive, to pass along

only what he’s given; responsible

for nothing but vigilance and acquiescence.

He gets the big picture, the ocean view,

recognizes the nuances, though as yet,

is unable to grasp the details.

Less than a hair’s breadth (the Masters say),

separates heaven from earth –

it requires an unhanding,

an atrophy of judgment,

a relinquishment of presumption.

O child of God, life itself to a man of faith

is the unfolding answer to all prayers