Before the angels

Before the angels                                                                                                                                                                   

A church bell at the end of my rope

might better suit.  I could tug it

instead of words and we could both listen

to the tolls and the tolls fading.   

The world at my windows is growing fainter, too,

little by little not quite there, having run out

of hocus pocus, steam and bluster which is all it ever was. 

The same faded repertoire to keep me at the knotted end;

coax me back from the cliff-edge darkness

into heavy traffic or inside the whispers and sighs

of so many naive and incoherent promises.

I have a darkness waiting for me and a depth

(I feel it), a light in the midst and so I repair, repair

with my Beloved into solitude and companionship,

mystery and resolution as the world in its wrong-headed way

keeps showing me how so very little I truly have to lose.

O child of God, lose yourself as best you might

before the angels come to cart you away.

The truth all along

The truth all along                                                                                 

The road of truth is along a narrow shelf. 

Stray to the left you hit stone.

Stray to the right you go over the edge. 

Nowhere to stop or turn around.

Very soon you want to be elsewhere,

relinquish the wheel, not from boredom

but from the unrelenting strain of concentration. 

But anywhere else is a looming threat,

an idle illusion, an escape from the task at hand.

Any delay is a postponement, not of arrival,

but of the truth all along – truth of the journey,

the route, the mountain, the vehicle,

the hands upon the wheel.  Truth of the One

Who has led you to where you are.

O child of God, your duty is to face Reality

as best you might, now and forever.

A desert silence

A desert silence                                                                                     

I have been as lost as the world

and in innumerable ways I still am.

The mystery of which I often speak

is only with the borrowed authority

of my Lord, the tenuous authority of my faith.

I am unequal to the world

but my Lord has overcome it,

shown me true things (I pray), inside and out;

leading me from my numerous trepidations

step by step; awakening me even here

in this bewildering wilderness with a desert silence.

O this restless world (!)

is but a dirt-encrusted pearl

spinning in silent space

having fallen from a necklace

torn from around His mighty throat.

O child of God, each day with trust and faith

you piece together His obscure, subjective clues. 

The exemplars

The exemplars                                                                                            

Where are the exemplars ?  I asked my Lord. 

The embodiments of Your teachings? 

We are old now.  Years and years

of Your tutelage and influence.

In myself and others, I see only

egoism, bewilderment and fear.

My Lord answered by allowing me

to chance upon His lovers at random,

opportune moments – soft words,

small gestures, kindness to others

while yet under the thumb of self,

not for show, not for show, nor gain,

not with calculation but striving silently,

solitary (except for Him), with little or no

reward or recognition their very sincere best

to live the way a faithful child of Meher should.

No long term motive – just the immediate reward

of love burgeoning from the dry husks of aged hearts.

O child of God, the Avatar is the measure 

but every other consideration tilts toward leniency.

Pretend game

Pretend game                                                                         

Meher referred to existence as the divine game –

but not a contest; not a flag to capture.

A pretend game.  A masquerade.

And once you find yourself

a mandated participant, the only course left

is to play your role best you can.   

The only way, apparently,

to bow out is to make that

holy, hair’s-breadth shift of perspective

where every moment you act

not for the moment but for the eternal,

ever aware of the pretense, recognizing

yourself and your fellow players

under the make-up and costumes to be

none other than God playing solitaire,

God the great ubiquitous pretender.

O child of God, follow the clues as best you can

until you are able to see through the charade.

The silence of Meher

The silence of Meher                                                                                  

You began Your ministry at a loss for words

amidst the human misery and longing,

enmity and despair.  What words to add

after three thousand years of empty human rhetoric,

the true teachings skewed and obfuscated,

almost never penetrating either hearts or heads?

Best to go back to a clean slate, a new language

older than clay, not intended for mouth nor ear,

straight to the heart, pinning

Your fortunate lovers to the wall,

communicating through the quivering shaft of your arrow.

And not just Your lovers (You say), all of Creation.

And only incrementally have I come to accept, mutely enrapt,

the power and primacy of your wordless awakenings.

O child of God, so many verses you have written
trying to express the silence of Meher.

Moving through the fair

Moving through the fair                                                                                     

The carousel whirling full speed

and even now the temptation

is to mount a carved steed and charge!

Wield a pretend sword and ‘round and ‘round

gallop amidst the scintillating lights,

music, laughter and movement. 

To appear to myself and others

to be grandly going somewhere.

There’s a carousel also inside my head.

One in my chest, too, with similar temptations.

It’s my task now to keep myself to myself,

keep the peace, note in passing

everything in this parti-colored world,

this ceaseless reel of thought,

this battleground which is my heart,

wending my way through the glitter

and the sham, confusion and despair

out there and in here; in here and out there.

O child of God, spiritual poise

is moving through the fair unfazed.

(painting by Joe DiSabatino)

The deeper you plunge

The deeper you plunge                                                                                   

When at last you see the Lord

is not going to give you what you want,

love has an opportunity to emerge. 

You can cease the charade.

Those posturings might have helped you once

get nearer to where you are but they must be

left outside like sandals at the Tomb.

Struck dumb by the process the deeper you plunge,

the Creator seems to have taken a shine to you –

apple of His eye, and you are thoroughly humbled

(for a little while), roughly shaken down to your boots.

This Friend Who is the One stealing away your shame

(though you keep grabbing it back),

painstakingly scrubbing away your fear

to reveal the love underneath worth more

than anything you ever dreamed you were wanting.

O child of God, put it into words best you can,

guessing how very far it is from the truth.

Not one crumb

Not one crumb                                                                                          

Words fail me.  With a deft swipe

I’m tempted to wipe clean this page

like clearing tiles from a board game.

Not one crumb do I know

of the great secrets and mysteries.

Meanwhile I’m being methodically

stripped of fear in a process

far beyond my understanding and abilities,

an ungovernable aspect of my awakening.

My only choice is between love and fear –

that old conflict of heart and head –

to battle strident and self-glorious

my illusory enemies or to fall silently

on my Lord’s terrible outstretched sword.

O child of God, words fail you because you

speak of things you know so little about.

The world's damaan

The world’s damaan                                                                             

I entered the Samadhi perfectly sane,

though frightened and weary,

emerging mad and drunken,

stumbling downhill to meet

the world which no longer knew me.

My agenda and the agenda of my Lord

are universes apart, yet hidden somehow

beneath the folds of what I deem

myself and existence to be,

with His law (the only Reality) taking precedent.

Coming around again now near the end,

my world from rough handling

shattered in my hands and no glue

nor strategy to piece it back.

Trying to hold the wheel and Meher

asking again and again what is your heading?

What is your heading, your harbor and why not

let the sea take you where it will?

O child of God, truth wrenches and tugs

and still you clutch tightly the world’s damaan.

Such dark solace

Such dark solace                                                                                         

The Prayer of Repentance scrubs us clean,

our sins, but also our guilt.

Repentance and forgiveness –

that we might be reminded gently

of our ignorance and frailties

and the enigmatic directions

our lives bend and break toward

in God’s great scheme.

To cling to our guilt is a self-indulgence,

the ego’s attempt to chastise itself into purity

and thus face not karma’s dogged law.

Such dark solace, they say,

is almost impossible to forego,

better to rinse it away in prayer

and stand before God joyously naked,

utterly trusting, free of any separative stain. 

O child of God, Meher said there is nothing to forgive,

yet He grants forgiveness and authors the Prayer.

On being a human being

On being a human being                                                                        

When the prospect hits you,

in theory if not in practice,

that no one is responsible for anything

they think, say or do, you grow silent. 

Immobile.  A preposterous idea at odds with

being a human being, life on the planet earth,

societal structures, religion and morality,

relationships of every stripe.  Silent because

it’s a notion inexplicable and indefensible. 

And wondrous – how human existence

might have evolved from scratch

on precepts that are simply not true,

information incomplete about who

and what we are, every supposition

negated by our fundamental ignorance.

Start off on the wrong foot and whatever

territory you tread will be hostile,

foreign, fearsome and strange.

O child of God, a mystery within a mystery,

approach it with humility and faith. 

A beautiful confusion

A beautiful confusion                                                  

I’ve taken up watercolors, by the way. 

After all these years in the sculptor’s studio.

I’ve foregone the hammer which I have

dearly loved for its weight and authority 

and the heavy, productive clinking in my ears.

No more trying to chisel and pound

the amorphous hardness into an image of my choosing

(or as near as I could get to it with these human hands).

I began painting out of habit with the same sort

of bold strokes and then I would fill in the delicate colors.

But of late, through necessity and inner guidance,

I have abandoned all shapes, boundaries and distinctions.

I put the wonderful colors to the delicate paper

and let them run where they will.  No strategy.

No aim, no standards now; no communication

beyond myself and my Muse.  Just a beautiful confusion.

The colors, whose distinctions are but a trick of light,

blend and bleed into one another,

a crude, necessary attempt at return

to the colorless oneness from which they emerged.

O child of God, celebrate your confusion.
The blurred edges of the mystery are being brushed up against.

Think of Noah

Think of Noah                                                                                         

Start your own project, Rumi advised. 

As absurd as Noah laboring daily

in the sandy shade of the ship’s hulk,

not a drop to show for all his devotion,

his lofty pronouncements and endeavors.

His self-opposition far harder to ignore

than the public’s derision, those habitual lapses

of faith and resolve – empty, arid days,

nights of isolation and confusion,

seductive arguments for capitulation and abandonment.

And doubt!  Would it not all come down

to a great dusty naught?  Start your own project,

Rumi advised, constructed daily –

the ribs of an inward, sturdy vessel

contrary to your own and all apparent

worldly reason, wisdom and evidence.

O child of God, whenever you distrust

your inner God-directed duties, think of Noah.

My Revealer

My Revealer                                                                                            

The true lover, Baba said, seals his lips  

as I’m tending to do these days

not from fiery longing (alas) but from the fear

that someone overhearing might want me

fitted for a jacket with very long sleeves.

I was a reasonable fellow once

who has turned irrational, making everyone nervous. 

I’m nervous, too, and weary, trying to wedge

the pieces of my crumbling world back

into some semblance of order.  It’s frightening.

With a certain thrill to it, also.  A strange, secret freedom. 

I sound out my friends with my newfound wisdom.

They are embarrassed for me, nodding politely,

shying away.  I get the idea that once

they turn the corner they break into a run.  No matter. 

One of the earth-shattering truths (or self-delusions)

which has come to me of late is that there is only myself

and my Revealer.  I answer to no one else.

O child of God, get wisdom from others only

by observing your reactions to their words and behavior.

The Great Ignorer

The Great Ignorer                                                                                     

Eruch once advised a lover to become the Great Ignorer

and though the suggestion was specific, it is my goal

of late to become such a man – the Great Ignorer. 

Does not non-attachment require it?

Being not of the world; turning the other cheek;

loving thy neighbor as thyself – do they not

require a great ignoring of everyone’s

(including my own) transgressions and differences?

Perhaps, to ignore our virtues also,

born of karma, a forgetting of self and God’s grace

not individual human strength and effort.

Urgently Maya is tugging at my sleeve

every moment offering fear, pleasure, forgetfulness

while someOne within seems to be urging remembrance: 

to turn my attention solely toward my Beloved

and to all else become the Great Ignorer.

O child of God, nothing is real but God, said Meher.

And nothing matters but love for God.