The blood and body of Christ

The blood and body of Christ                                                                

Might we liken the Avatar to a fermenting agent?

Yeast added to the dough; to the must;

incrementally altering our nature

and completing thus our destined becoming –

sacred bread and wine; the blood and body of Christ.

Our journeys a transformation rather than a quest,

a rising up from the rough, raw mix into holy bread.

An inevitable organic turning from the murky

skin-and-stem juice and pomace

into clean, lucent, holy wine.

O child of God, your musings and metaphors

could never capture the complexity of the Mystery.

The green essence

The green essence                                                                                  

Chop it down.  Fell that tree.

Let the chips fall where they may,

tumbling thunderously around me.

Bring it all down – my elevated, foliated perches,

crow’s nests views, my hopes in the high branches,

with Your sharp-bladed axe

cutting to the quick, deeper to the core.

I want to say this even as we both know

it’s but useless bluster once it reaches

my vulnerable mouth which has broken

its teeth on a thousand such hopeless cries.

But it starts pure enough, in the dark

heart of the spar, far from the accruements

of time and the journey, ignorance and self.

Truly sincere, holy as the green essence

from which it first emerged.

O child of God, you talk big yet

moan and sigh at the slightest quiver.

To dwell in eternity

To dwell in eternity                                                                                   

To train our minds upon the truth

we cannot see and do not live,

returning solely, doggedly to it

and to His eternal promise and solace –

this is the heart of our renunciation.

Invulnerable, immortal beings

(not creatures) are we, far removed in reality

from the world’s chaos, threat and drama.  

This is our meditation,

the venue of our remembrance,

the bread we are daily given,

calling us ceaselessly, silently,

to guide us through our frightening,

obscure dreams into the final (we pray) clarity. 

O child of God, the choice we have if any

is to dwell in the world or to dwell in eternity.

The cup

The cup    
                                                                                               

Not my will, but Thine, said Jesus in Gethsemane.

Interpreted as:  I yield my personal will to God’s.

But perhaps Jesus was saying, my will is not mine.

Or saying, my will and God’s are the same. 

Or saying, there is no will but God’s.  Never was.   

If the cup had been taken from Jesus

or He cast it down himself,

fleeing from the garden into the night

that, too, would have been God’s will.

What happens and doesn’t happen

inside and outside ourselves is always –

has always been – God’s will.

Jesus didn’t ignore himself to give God room,

He vacated the premises or perhaps

He was thrown out into the street

and found He was God.  Had always been God. 

Was nothing but.  Nothing but God from the first. 

I and my Father are one, He said. 

And He lives consciously and unconsciously

with that Reality before and ever after.

O child of God, your pen name is an apt compromise

between Who you are and who you take yourself to be.

Call me down

Call me down                                                                                            

Call me Zacchaeus in the sycamore tree,

a small man keeping myself above the crowd,

asking God for a glimpse only

of the One among the multitude,

that striding flesh of love and purity

ever beyond my outstretched hands.

I have attained this reasonable height

by effort and cleverness.

Hidden among the foliage to pray

with as much heart as I can muster –

come by me, Lord, and call me down. 

Address me this day or any other

and lead me home along Your route

to bless it beyond my understanding.

O child of God, the ancient path, says Meher,

is a circuitous one, leading back home.

Stone bearer

Stone bearer                                                                                             

Often I do not suffer fools lightly –

a great sin because there are

so many fools in the world,

especially those arrogant ones

who do not suffer fools lightly.

It’s difficult for me to embrace

my human family because I refuse

to set down the stones I bear in each fist.

Stone bearer, stone caster.  I chuck
those bruising missiles in thought and word

to relieve the weight of my own burden

but immediately find myself

picking up more, ever on the ready,

never letting it sink in that it is the weight

of those stones that keeps me yoked

and grounded to this dark, dark earth.

O child of God, where did you ever gather the notion

that compassion makes you vulnerable?

This inherent buoyancy

This inherent buoyancy                                                                          

Drown in My Ocean, said my Lord.

Perhaps that begins with a lonely,

formidable attempt to swim across it.

Enter the cold bitterness, pushing beyond

the breakers, far from the populated shore.

How soon we lose our bearings!

Weary, no longer able to plumb

the depths or determine a direction,

we find ourselves in a sort of drifting limbo

at the mercy of the Ocean’s shove and heave;

not a spit of sand in sight.  Drown, yes,

but how to go about it?  With this inherent

buoyancy, these lungs involuntarily

gasping every other moment for air.

I’m told I’m made of salt water  

but it doesn’t feel that way. 

It feels like I am a speck of synthetic debris

bobbing forever separately atop it.

O child of God, why mewl endlessly 

about a mystery much too deep to fathom? 

Full flower

Full flower                                                                                                 

To become perfect, said Jesus,

leave all and follow Me

and the young man went away sad

for he had many possessions.

I am saddened also by the great wealth

of fear I refuse to leave behind. 

But I do not go away.  I trail my Lord

from a safe distance carrying my bundles with me.

Just love Me, says my Lord,

turning to me every now and then.

I don’t quite grasp His meaning but I cannot

let Him go without me into the yonder hills. 

My will is bent toward Him

(whether I bent it that way or did He)

and I pray my bruising, ironclad resolve

is but a rudimentary form of love, a seed perhaps,

which in some distant lifetime hence

shall come into full flower.

O child of God, how might your Lord be embraced

without dropping everything else you hold dear?

The presence of His absence

The presence of His absence                                                                

Towards the end of my life,

for the most part, it’s God and me.

When it’s only me, I become unsettled,

plumb my heart, enter into prayer.

I review the articles of my faith

like thumbing through

a well-worn photo album;

imagine, rehearse His presence

until the reappearance and assurance

of the One Who never leaves.

Almost nothing in my purse now,

particularly in His sort of currency.

There’s only an either/or proposition:

His presence in my everyday life 

or the presence of His absence.

And whether by grace or effort,

this trivial bit of remainder is my only asset

and He the last, lingering object of my enthusiasm.

Have faith, o child of God.  One day your very freedom

might be purchased by the dust in your purse.

Upon the darkling plain

Upon the darkling plain                              

How poignant it must look from above ­–

a tableau of tragic beauty as billions stir

upon the darkling plain we consider lit,

tricked by the dim lanterns we hold aloft,

their small, illumined circumferences.  

Ah, the furtiveness afforded us by the half-light!

The anonymity, duplicity and stealth

as we fool ourselves in the shadows

between lamps, so far from the sun.

Manipulate the truth

into whatever shape we please.

Get away with it – the human cruelties,

betrayals large and small,

the brutality, anger, greed and lust

which breed in that dark, moist scenario.

We lay it at the feet of those

we consider to be other-than-ourselves,

in our inability to concede

our own blindness and culpability

in the continual darkness that engulfs us all.

O child of God, Jesus said I am the Light

while Meher in Persian refers to the Sun.

The stirrings of the heart

The stirrings of the heart                                                                          

This pink sunrise reminds me

of a certain iconic coat.

You said You wear both,

on body and sky

and we accept Your Word

with its obvious implausibility,

(no more than the utterings of other

great mystics nor Buddha and Jesus)

attributing our perplexity to the limitations

of language, consciousness and intellectuality

purely because Your awakening prods

and stirrings of the heart

satisfy so deeply our hunger

while remaining yet a mere promise,

an intimation of the inconceivable,

ineffable glory that is our eventual due.

O child of God, truth does not appease

but perplexes the human mind. 

To satisfy our thirst

 To satisfy our thirst                                                                                 

A wayfarer in the wilderness dying of thirst

stumbles upon a cave where monks once lived. 

His great hope dashed – finding it deserted,

dust-laden, with empty jugs, parched manuscripts,

roughly sketched maps of doomed, abandoned wells.

My Lord said He has come not to teach

but . . . to satisfy our thirst.  Promising

the wayfarer shall by appointment meet

someone somewhere who will restore him –

in precious, strategic sips of life-giving water,

guide him gently to a higher realm

of deep, icy pools where his thirst

will be satisfied entirely, then forgotten,

becoming ultimately inconceivable.

O child of God, the only value of your imagination

is its aid to the remembrance of your Beloved.

Bullock cart

Bullock cart                                                                                              

A lame man riding through the dark

in the bed of a bullock cart, a pummeling

with each pothole, road rut;

the destination vague and remote.

No stopping, no turning back.  

A perfect One leads the way

telling stories, singing ballads

of the valiant and the persistent.

My Lord gave the lepers comfort, not healing. 

The cure was there already, in the process of time,

in the death of diseased bodies and the taking

of new ones.  Comfort was His gift.  

In the dark, nursing my wounds,

I see clearly now my own eventual cure

somewhere beyond the thumps of time and distance,

assured by the promise and nature of the malady.

As I listen to my Lord’s songs,

hold His hand, sup from His spoon,

the old cart shudders, rumbles along, winding its way

towards dawn and those inevitable, far-away gates.

O child of God, Meher says every bump in the road

is a shedding and a shaping of your eventual perfection.

An amazing tale

An amazing tale                                                                                       

God woke up; uttered the first Word

(a question, no less!) – Who am I?

Or so I have been taught quite collaterally

by the One Who didn’t come for that.

A variation of His entreaty – Come unto Me;

powerful enough to pull all drop souls

from their warm beds and shoo them out

into the inhospitable weather.

A pronouncement that has never lost

over the ages its strength to lure us

from stone to humanity, imploring our souls  

through our finger-plugged ears,

our clamped-shut flesh to find out

Who He is and who we really are. 

O child of God, the Silent One relates an amazing tale.

Check within to see if it rings true.

Tag along

Tag along                                                                                                  

The first Word, says the Lord Who uttered it,

was a question, a whim that begged an answer –

Who am I?  What a curve ball!  A monkey wrench

bit of mischief from the One

Who knows everything – to ask a question!

The ensuing uproar, the stuttering reply

has meant the coming into existence

of time, space, separation and shadow,

all the great stirrings, all manner of illusion,

this marvelously intricate milieu and melee –

existence (we are told) on the way to non-existence

and then to wide-awake existence eternal.

O child of God, what else to do but clench tightly

His damaan and tag along for the ride!

Attempted saints

Attempted saints                                                                                              

Nothing more natural than a saint

in rolled-up sleeves guilelessly attending

to the daily chores and prayers

shoulder to shoulder, perhaps,

with attempted saints

zealously scrubbing their own souls

to emulate the perfect Jesus

and be pleasing in the sight of God.

Last and least, along come the inveterate

devotees who seek in their own way

to escape the wheel of birth and death –

rescue, rejection and renunciation

being the cornerstones of their calculated

austerities, chores, readings and prayers.

O child of God, how might you reconcile

your unremitting efforts with total surrender?