Love comes first

Love comes first               

Love overflowing;

love enough for everyone.

Jesus feeding the multitudes

loaves and fishes –  

love enough for everyone,

plenty left over, and still yet more.

You showed me such a love once.

You filled my basket.  Overflowing.

I should have spent the rest of my life

hovering near that love – undistracted,

plumbing its depths, bringing it to the surface,

ladling it out, breaking and sharing such a love

as You are, as You bring,

as You have given.

Love should come first –

to become a feeder, a slaker of thirst,

to become an aperture

through which Your light might shine.

O child of God, Meher keeps you

as near to the flame as you can stand.

The matter of Love

The matter of Love       

You replaced First Cause with Original Whim,

karma’s tripwire rendered moot

where only Love matters (saith the Lord)!

Birds made of sky, fish of ocean, songs of silence,

trees of clay like Adam the walking tree

or the walking Fish, the tree-bearing Jesus

stumbling up Calvary Who became

the Silent Master on the Hill,

revivifying every bird feather, tree leaf, song note,

fish scales luminous, iridescent, transparent

with the One and only sacred, vibrant

and ubiquitous matter of Love.

O child of God, your words are birds escaping

through an broken-barred window in the holiness.

The rose thorny lane

The rose thorny lane                                                                                

Stop and smell the roses, the pundits say

but shall we keep God waiting

down the rose thorny lane another day?

With death approaching from behind,

ever overtaking us among its dusty, fragrant shadows,

this path we’ve tread countless times -

and are we not yet sated

by its alluring splendor and bouquet?  

Praise the Creator not creation;

enjoy and savor its showy riches

from the safe and lofty lap

of His holy, immaculate perspective.

Fly to His arms, then wander up the lane

hand in hand, with all the time in the world.

O child of God, remind yourself of Mehera’s labor

in the gently scented gardens of Meherazad.

Impartiality

Impartiality                                                                                    

He preferred His juice lukewarm;

a glass of water, even an occasional

soda pop – room temperature.

And windows tightly shut

in the most sweltering weather.  O lovers!

This should make us weep hot tears –

these small preferences,

for the delicately broken

human being who held them

and Who in the large,

went about the business of service,

sacrifice and surrender, without a thought

to self or pleasure, comfort or ease,

placing Himself under His own weighty thumb,

meeting His own austere requirements –

the Epitome of servitude and mastery.

One with karma, without waver,

equivocation, preference or doubt.

O child of God, true humility is found

in the impartiality of the great Godman.

Appomattox

Appomattox                                                                                          

I die daily, said Paul. 

Dynamic is the process,

suggested Eruch, surrender chosen freely,

repeatedly at every critical juncture.

Yes, but surely eventually strung

like an endless rosary beyond

the clutches of time and self.

A seamless union, a tightly clasped fetter;

acquiescence trussed up

and delivered entire.

I want to surrender like Lee at Appomattox, 

stripped of rank and authority,

at the mercy of forces I have long opposed,

my world in dissolution and ruin, broken sword,

blood and smoke, silence, cessation,

the last battle, last death over,

a reuniting, the cleansing wind above

unfurling our common flag.

O child of God, you want this war to be done;

to rest in the arms of peace.

Even to ask

Even to ask                                                                                             

Prayer is the start of detente,

a tête-à-tête, a turning away

from the cheap, the shoddy;

away from the opportunist, the scoundrel within,

drawing nearer to the purity of the Source.

But, comes the day, o petitioner, 

when any request or suggestion

is a grave faux pas,

an attempted undermining,

a sundering of faith. 

Even to ask for virtue or liberation;

even to ask for the sake of others. 

Even to ask . . . is a violation

of the most delicate, flyweight, 

prayerful and paper-thin arrangements

between illusion and Truth,

lover and God;

separating the rare truly faithful 

from the scheming, frightened,

manipulative crowd.

O child of God, your intended destination?

You can’t get there from here.

A two-cent remark

A two-cent remark                                                                                   

Have faith in nothing of this world, said the old man,

except the efficacy of having faith in nothing.

When were you ever invited by God

to make a choice, conjecture,

display a preference, submit a two-cent remark

regarding His most holy and only apparent gift?

Out of ignorance comes our assumptions,

self-assurances, our unauthorized permissions

(in spite of ceaseless clues to the contrary),

to change any of the whole inviolate order

of things laid bare by our Creator

from the beginning of time,

for our own limited, fleeting comfort,

convenience, elucidation and desire. 

O child of God, from whence comes

the notion the world is yours to change?

Various apples

Various apples                                                                                        

We desire in our human love

only the best for the various

apples of our eyes,

our clutched-to-the-breast beloveds.

Our love’s great failing –

the truth that we know not exactly

what is best and what constitutes

further entanglement on a field

so sad and vast as time and creation;

what is pure and what is tainted

from hearts sorely cleaved and teeming;

sorely cleaved and teeming.

Love Divine, on the contrary, said my Lord,

is not originated but bestowed (divinely);

wants nothing, has no center, no motive,

no standpoint, no hub, beginning in the light

of non-existence and never venturing

into the shadowy realms of the illusory self.

O child of God, wish your loved ones the best.

You are so very far removed from Love Divine.

Love itself

Love Itself    

Everyone is a Baba lover.

Most don’t know the phrase

or use the name.  Those who do,

even the ones who consider Him

mad or a fraud, self-indulgent, evil,

love Him and serve Him

in their own limited and inimitable way –

can’t we imagine this? 

Can’t we grant Him this much?

Everyone loves God, don’t they? 

Even those who’ve given up

or never knew or profess not to believe.

What else can love be (and from whence)?

What other object can love be for

in hearts that long, the force

that propels all life, all humanity

towards beauty, mercy, perfection, bliss?

Towards an ultimate quenching of loneliness?

What else can that love be for . . . but for God? 

The ineliminable and ubiquitous God and for Love Itself.

O child of God, everyone is a Baba lover,

each in his own limited and inimitable way.

On love's behalf

On love’s behalf                                                                                     

The Godman lives on love’s behalf

and thereby couples the disparities

of flesh and spirit, truth and self.

A lifetime of service and repair,

the epitome of mercy, the Godman

appears on love’s behalf

and as is His habit, never looks back,

never looks up from His task.

Arrives, survives and departs on love’s behalf,

relying upon the resounding chords

of love’s lilting, everlasting, ultimate

presence and essence to carry the day,

to preserve and persevere, to convey

His holy mission and message

to every hungry cell and soul, every being 

in God’s vast and illusory repertoire.

O child of God, liberation involves the lover,

also, living at last only on love’s behalf.