A wine-soaked heart

A wine-soaked heart                                                                                   

God asked Moses if he believed in manna from heaven.

Moses couldn’t answer.  His once-famished mouth was full.

Jesus asked the disciples if they believed

in water turned to wine.  They countered not,

their drunken lips unable to form syllables.

Bhau clamored for a wine-soaked heart

and a truth he could neither do nor say.

Where he ended up is between him and his Beloved.

I sought, apparently, spiritual intoxication. 

You left me punch drunk and reeling,

bruised and (a bit fearfully) begging for more.

To say we are on the path is a trick of language.

The path is in our chest, above our chronic stumbling –

unfolding, enfolding, up and down;

twisting, turning, shaking us loose

from our ineffectual pedestrian gait.

O child of God, as a child Jesus was gentle with you.

Meher, to your great fortune, has taken off the gloves.

                    

All your worldly cares

All your worldly cares                                                                               

I’ve a pendant on a chain

that hovers near my heart,

its necklace strung with beads.

A gift from my Beloved,

I wear it into the world. 

When I am quiet enough,

here and there during the day,

I feel its presence upon my skin.

No worries touch me in that faithful condition.

The things of the world carry no weight.

My hope and prayer (along the beaded chain)

is to someday know without a lapse

the wearing of that pendant, a shield

and a haven near my heart and in my mind,

an assurance as I move daily through it

that nothing in the world can touch me.

O child of God, surrender is the gift to Meher

of all your worldly cares.

It's all medicine

It's all medicine

Sometimes the required medicine is bitter,
but bitterness is not proof of potency.

Some misers delight more in their miserable surroundings
               than in their hoarded gold.
They view each meanness as a validation of their devotion.

O child of God, accept the joys of this world!
Sometimes, that is as difficult as accepting the pain.

Don't you believe it yet . . . that God is behind
               the slightest gesture?
Every moment, every moment, is designed for your benefit.

Seek the perfect peace listed in the Twelve Ways.
Allow the river to flow through hands folded in prayer.

It's all medicine.
The humility of taking our doses is the remedy.

O child of God, the Beloved knows your every ailment.
There is a cure for all within His divine perfection.

                                     (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)

God was born

God was born

God was born (as any lover will attest)
at David Sassoon Hospital in Pune, India ...

more than a century ago now.  That is to say,
God entered the mortal realm an embryo in a womb --

vulnerable, dependent, minuscule and yet, growing
inexorably toward fruition.  Nothing can hold back God;

His precisely scheduled manifestation.
Even Jesus (of the ascension and the miraculous birth)

began as a floating fish in a woman's belly.
O seeker of God ... God is within you ...

right now -- (it's how He enters the realm).
Within you -- vulnerable, dependent, minuscule, yes,

but growing every moment, inexorably toward fruition.
And, in the course of His love and law,

He shall outgrow the flesh that encapsulates Him,
transcend the mind that ensnares .. and escape

forever the narrow, bedimmed, illusory confines
of your self.  O seeker, nothing can hold back

the God within you nor prevent His destined,
precisely scheduled manifestation.

O child of God, happy birthday! Everyone --
says Meher Baba -- is destined for the supreme goal.

                                  (first published in 2013)

Soft spot

Soft spot                                                                                                     

I’ve a soft spot in my heart for You.

I hope it’s an early indication of ripening;

a gently expanding center of urgency.

Those of us with hardened hearts

are misjudged – our vulnerability

is why we grow the impervious rind,

adhere so firmly to the core,

our hearts remaining evergreen,

credulous, timid and pristine.  

A soft spot now inside me,

pliable enough to shape into a haven,

a home, a harbor; soft enough to embrace,

to yield to, flee to without fear

and find my Self there waiting.

O child of God, slowly the fortress

is being overrun by irresistible forces of Love.

Homeland

Homeland                                                                                         

God being infinite and endless,

how might I ever come to a conclusion!

Rather than plucking out all these loose ends

and judging the whole by the particular,

   

when will I feel sufficiently thwarted,

weary enough to leave my work

for the restful shade of His promise?

When will I ever trust His Word?

Enough to keep quiet,

to actually grasp its meaning

in a tongue foreign to my own –

the lost language of my homeland.

O child of God, there is a cloth spread

with bread and wine under His tender branches.

The narrow path

The narrow path

Your wine glass shattered within me,
the jagged edges burning,

the wine drained away.
How to piece together a broken life?

What could make it whole - after You walked through it?
Lead me from these ruins, o Lord.

I remember climbing that yonder Hill -
that's where the blood trail starts.

Lost to the world, lost in the heart-regions
on this narrow, crooked path leading home.

O child of God, your Beloved chose this path for you.
Ordinary life is all of heaven your timid heart can hold.

                                   (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)

The delicate efficacy

The delicate efficacy                                                                                   

I'm talking in my sleep again

rather than waiting until I am awakened.

Periodically, my Lord leads me

down this particular garden path.

The frail limbs of my perceptions

are incapable of bearing fruit 

but from His immaculate silence

and incomparable explanations, 

comes the great notion that it’s best

not to rely so much on what He says

(because of the language barrier)

but in Who He undoubtedly is,

taking the irrevocable plunge into utter faith,
where no parables, comparisons or analogies may reach.

O child of God, from Meher’s teachings

glean the delicate efficacy of silence.

Signpost

Signpost                                                                                                       

There I am basking in the glow,

sitting unperturbed at Your feet

when a tumult outside the darbar

jerks me up and I hasten out

to confront the insolence and irreverence

of the intruder, the disturber of my peace.

Almost to the door (most times now),

I realize I have left without instruction

or permission Your presence,

turned my back on You; rushing away

to address the issues of my own contentions.

As my sanctimony shrivels, I skulk back,

lay my head at Your feet where I realize

I do not as yet belong in an upright body.

O child of God, anger is a signpost

letting you know you have gone astray.

Horseflies

Horseflies

O Beloved, You are the white horse Avatar!
We are a swarm of horseflies trailing behind.

Dropping Your earthly body, You became a great,
               celestial Stallion;
Magnificent - beyond imagination and conception.

Loosened from the harness of physicality
You regained infinite power.

Now a few of the horseflies have begun to buzz -
philosophical discussions

about words, meaning, priorities and agendas.
They argue about the direction the Horse should be led.

O child of God, how can a swarm of horseflies
control the direction of the great, celestial Horse?

And who would want to follow -
where horseflies lead?

O child of God, follow the great Horse within you.
Let His silent purpose lead you to the ultimate goal.

                                     (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)

Meher's silence

Meher’s silence                                                                                           

I want to know Your language

(having come to the end of mine)

following Your dove-like hands

intent upon telling me the Truth,

but invariably I lose my bearings

amid the flurried sleight-of-hand.

But perhaps Your telling is not for me

to grasp the truth but to let go

of a lifetime of what I have taken to be true,
its reality in Your hands

proven so patently short of the mark.

Someday (You promise) I’ll learn

the gist of Your immaculate fluency

and bow out of the conversation,

there having been said between us

all there ever need be said.

O child of God, so many words you use

to express your desire for Meher’s silence.

The original silence

The original silence                                                                                     

I lived for years with a silence

to which I would not pay heed.

Instead I tried to fill it with words. 

It proved to be (only recently) one

not of deficiency, but of satiation –

a brimful cup -- yet also the silence

of longing, like the Master’s glance

rendering His lover speechless inside and out.

A silent tune to pay a mind to

rather than thought-words or the world’s roar.

A silence without the cessation of noise

yet which no sound may penetrate

nor could it ever be dispelled

because it is the original silence

to which we all must return –

where the real things are given and received.

O child of God, enough of words.

Let silence speak for itself.

Fooled by God

Fooled by God

Some caught a glimpse of Your face
and knew in an instant You are the Avatar.

Even today, from a film or photograph,
some recognize You immediately as the Christ.

I wish I could say it happened that way with me.
How patient, how infinitely patient, You were.

Years of careful attention; pleading Your case,
               coaxing and cajoling,
before You got a holy foot in the door.

Meher, You claim to be God in human form!
And I believe You with all my heart.

If it is not true, You have fooled me.
If it is not true, my heart has been fooled by God!

I am willing to suffer the consequences of that.
My fate is in the hands of Meher Baba and God.

O child of God, do honey bees produce bitter gall?
Meher Baba can only speak the truth because He is the truth.

                                      (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)

The fisher of men

The fisher of men

My search began as if You were a fish eluding a net!

You evaded my every snare.

All the while, the grit of my discontent

became slowly the pearl of my dependency.

O seekers!  The Avatar is the fisher of men,

not amenable to being caught Himself, 

apparently delighting in the unique challenge

and personal victory of individually  

hooking each lover and hauling them,

exhausted and defeated, aboard His ship.

O child of God, it’s not the triumph of the seeker

that leads to the Beloved – but his or her’s utter defeat.

Humble departure

Humble departure                                                                                                

The only real relationship I have

with my fellow creatures (per my Lord)

is the shared interior presence of the One God

hidden under His multifarious disguises.

To align my human relations

nearer to the truth, my Lord suggested:

Why not consider yourself already dead?

And thus by the absence of self

reduce the illusory two by one –

bringing to my every worldly association

only the mutual, pared down, honest,

soul-baring relationship of the creature to its Creator.

O child of God, move toward the truth

by arranging your own humble departure.

Invisible hands

Invisible hands

Rather than the lay of the land, weary traveler,
study the fair plains and valleys of your Beloved's face.

Lift like the hawk above adverse terrain,
upheld and guided by invisible hands.

This dark cell where you've been locked away -
who's to say it is not some long-forgotten holy shrine?

Like milk from the breast or honey from the comb -
why do I ever tarry outside my Beloved's house?

Words gather at my tongue and fingertips
but which ones contain my heart's blood?

I long for poetry with Your hands in it;
wordless gestures like the flight of birds.

O child of God, thank Him for His companionship -
the silence and poetry now within your chest.

                                 (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)

Honey and venom

Honey and venom                                                                                                

I have been in the world and of the world.

Now grown old I retire to a monk’s cell.

No great hardship – the door of my chamber

shutting out the croon and roar, glamour and paste,

honey and venom of the great Illusion.

I see now:  No worldly temptations

ever lured me into the streets without

the inner promptings of my tumultuous

heart and mind and (says my Beloved)

the surplus compulsions of the deceived creature

whom I once was and have for ages ever been.

To become purely a child of God, at last,

I must leave myself behind, breaking ages-old habits,

scatter the ashes and debris of my desire,

relinquish bit by bit a lifelong faith

in my illusory lack, my alias and alibi,

recognize and embrace, moment to moment,

(in new-found servitude and trust)

that dimly glimpsed part of me

that is and belongs always to my Beloved.

O child of God, another hit-and-miss attempt

to express the ineffable workings of the path.

The crust of armor

The crust of armor                                                                                             

After laying down the sword

the self must unhand its shield,

climb from its crust of armor naked and doomed.

Surrender comes not only when the soldier

finds his cause hopelessly lost

but also unworthy, his rebellion needless,

his allegiances distorted, his submission righteous,

his adversary, in truth, his liberator.

And when the armor is abandoned

(per the mystics) the self proves to be

the armor itself – superfluous, illusory,

enclosing an ancient and ineffectual ghost.

O child of God, surrender is impossible without

the solace and beguilement of the Saviour.

Dream coat

Dream coat

It's a troubled sleep that bears this dream -
but with morning comes an awakening.

You slipped off Your coat and deftly entered
the Infinite-eternal then beckoned for us to follow.

That tattered dream coat served You well.
O to see You in it now, standing at my gate!

Beloved One, my heart is in ruins -
You drifted through it in Your flowing white gown;

overturning the goblet, this bleak heart
suddenly stained in Your lovely colors.

A counterweight does exist for the world's burdens;
that rose-strewn slab atop my Beloved's crypt.

O child of God, lay heart and head at that stone
and awaken from the dream of the ages.

                             (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)

Felling the yew

Felling the yew                                                                                           

The tree in the garden was a yew,

it’s red fruit succulent and benign

but the toxicity of the seeds tainted 

the ruined couple’s blood and their progeny.

The needled limbs of that ancient yew

poison yet the garden breeze;

its roots contaminate the soil,

the wind-and-rain-scattered seeds

seasonally propagate new toxins.

Many a game child has tried their honed axe

upon that lonely tree grown iron-like and huge

but it requires instead an abeyance and a spurning, 

a love-soaked immobilization and purity

possessed by no son or daughter of Adam.

It requires a blow by a lightweight,

reborn, new life, post-garden child of God.

O child of God, pray someday your pen name

reflects the accomplished reality of your soul.

Incomparable perfection

Incomparable perfection                                                                                      

Since my Beloved told me I am an eternal being,

much of the old urgency has fallen away.

Since I stopped believing in myself,

ceased rattling my karmic chains,

played my hunch on the law of must,

time matters little to me now.

Wherever it is I’m bound, God will get around to it,

my arrival as precisely orchestrated as the flight of stars.

How could it be otherwise under His exacting command?

If I’ve misjudged my position there will be

an abundance of time to correct the error.

What’s a few more centuries plastered on

to the end of my eternity? Or an additional

allotment of comparative binding and suffering

before my fated release into the infinite sea of bliss?

Time is naught when the mind is fixed on the now,

more and more serving the Master every moment

in the lover’s body as He once was served in His own.

O child of God, your every thought and occurrence

is an integral element in the incomparable perfection of God.

Prayers

Prayers

You gave us three prayers:
The Master's Prayer - to tell us Who You are.

The Prayer of Repentance - to remind us who we are.
And the Beloved God Prayer - to show us the bridge
            between the two.

The Master's Prayer I often recite, but know very little about -
unfathomable images like 'Soul of souls', Source of truth',
            'Ocean of love'.

Perfection, non-duality, endlessness, omniscience -
             what are they to me?
And addressing not only 'God the Beloved'
              but the 'Beyond God' and the 'Beyond God', also!

Yet I go on saying Your prayers.
They form a sweetness in my mouth, a warmth in my chest.

The Master's Prayer tells us Who You are - but also
              Who we are.
Dropping a stone into a deep well, we'll hear that splash much later.

O child of God, say the prayers Meher Baba has given you.
They are prasad from the Master.

                                             (from The Garden of Surrender 2004)

The living precepts

Living precepts                                                                                           

Certain ones grown old become lighter,

a foretaste of their flying away. 

Shoulders nudged forward by age

as if to accept wings, unhitched

from a long duration of burdens;

footprints shallow in the sandy soil.

Rather than well worn words out of a crumbling mouth –

an arresting smile, eyes shiny with eloquence.

Not frailty but etherealness –a dearth inside

of leaden opinions, judgment and grudge. 

Collect a loose embrace from those

who can no longer be held down. 

They are the living precepts,

their bodies atremble with vulnerability

not for death but for a yielding to truth,

the last gasp before an overtaking,

a settled down surrender and a faithful waiting

for a new adventure to begin.

O child of God, may your last breath

place you that much nearer to God.

The good life

The good life                                                                                               

Like a chef in the marketplace we go through life

picking ripe delicacies for the evening meal,

proud of our efforts, care and expertise.
Luxuries, getaways, comfort, travel -

this is the best we can do -
the good life; the way of affluence.    

And when the prior evening’s feast

has turned to fetid waste,

our bellies empty and whining,

off we go again for a new day’s adventure,

the fruits of our labor spent on brief,

innocuous provisional acquisitions. 

And on the last day, with only our hunger left

in our empty hands, we shall ponder one last time

the scripture on the underside of the stone –

where neither moth nor dust doth corrupt.

O child of God, inquire of the Father –

what treasures endure beyond the abiding grave?

Being led home

Being led home

Your eloquence has left me speechless -
a dramatic pause of forty-four years!

How can I speak?  My heart is in my throat.
Even the repetition of Your name intrudes
             upon the silence between us.

Lately I've become drunk on the repetition of Your name.
Now I am less susceptible to those other intoxications:
             anger, greed and lust.

The purity of Your name draws the poison from my wounds.
O Beloved, how deep is the silence beneath the trapdoor
              of our hearts?

The silence of existence before God woke up.
Everyone is being led home by that silence -

that silence we have lost
yet carry around inside us.

O child of God, listen to the Beloved's silence
until it becomes louder than the noise of the world.

                           (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)

You never let go

You never let go                                                                                        

After I wised up, I told my adult self

I knew not what I was doing –

nine years old tramping down the aisle

to give my life to Jesus.  But lately I see

I knew exactly what I was doing,

my untouched heart roughly awakened   

and refusing then to settle for anything less.

Very soon I wised up, took back my life

and went my worldly way. It was when I began

to reawaken and search for You

that I knew not what I was doing

yet reduced by the painful invalidity of the world

to having nothing else worth doing.

And learning later that once You accept

a lamb into the fold You never let go.

It was You who initiated my adult search

for the one Who is within me all along

and for that child, lost but not abandoned,

being now mercifully relieved

of all his worldly wisdom.

O child of God, you have not changed a whit

since that surrender and neither has your Lord.

The king's hand

The king’s hand                                                                                        

When the flood of Your words

leaves me speechless and hollow,

my own expressions meaningless

as the complaints of a flag     

dealt roughly by the wind, 

it’s like the story of the king

who allowed his attendants

to seize any one treasure

to be given freely unto them.  O Beloved!

Like the faithful servant girl,

let me grasp the king’s hand, the source

of these treasures and every other,

evident or hidden, honoring the Poet,

His words and wisdom, His prowess and plan.

O child of God, these poems should always

leave you empty of any comparisons.

Whitewashed trunks

Whitewashed trunks

There is no hand to hold but Yours.
Every other comfort is fleeting and false.

Every other guidance leads down a road
where the bridge is washed out.

But when I am holding Your hand how can I go astray?
You are the journey and the journey's end.

In a thousand voices, You point out the truth.
Truth is banyan trees lining a dark road with whitewashed trunks.

O Silent One, You speak in the words of Rumi and Hafiz,
          Vivekananda, Thich Nhat Hanh,
in Eckhart, Suzuki and Ramana Maharshi.

You speak in the words of the Avatar
rephrased again and again in each incarnation.

And, of course, You speak in silence,
in the beautiful, clear silence that echoes continuously in my heart.

O child of God, there is only One hand to hold.
Do not be led by charlatans down the garden path.

                       (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)