His scattered brood

His scattered brood                                                                                    

Good reasons had I in the beginning

to step onto the path – fear chiefly,

a longing for truth and light;

a quest for peace, certitude, meaning.

They’ve all fallen away now –

the unborn has entered the birth canal,

(or such is my faith); I’m being

shunted forward without reason –

yielding to the push and pull of something larger;

submitting as best I might to the process –

leaving the dark familiar for the bright unknown.

There never were any reasons. 

Or maybe just the One if you wish to word it that way –

the Father is gathering up His scattered brood.

O child of God, any concept that enisles 

must be abandoned.

Personal Lord

Personal Lord                                                                                             

Comes a point when the individuality

of your lifelong path overwhelms

all thoughts of comparison,

your eccentricities persuasive indicators

of a personal intimacy with your Creator. 

What you amount to is a blend

of His various infinite attributes,

specifically arranged with a dissimilarity

to every other human creature.

Over time, this revelation of His intricacy

unleashes love from a quaking heart;

crumbles the walls of solitude;

brings the cosmic God down to earth

in an every-moment-advent to be embraced

by mind, body and soul as the one true Friend,

the only trace of sameness within each of us.

O child of God, some Christians

use the phrase personal Lord and Savior.

Forefinger and thumb

Forefinger and thumb

Every time I think I am firmly on the path

You shake the ground out from under me;

devise a way to push me over the edge.

Learn to live empty-handed, You say,

utterly helpless.  There’s not one

square inch of holy ground

in this world upon which to stand.

Hold on to Me.  Only Me.

O Lord, what have I to do

in all of existence but fall

into Your arms and yet I grasp

at every straw that might prevent it.

O child of God, pray for the day your whole world will fit

inside the perfect circle made by His forefinger and thumb.

                                  (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)

The long way home

The long way home                                                                                    

A cleaving of the mind and tongue;

daily probing, prodding, plumbing 

a deep and nebular unknown, unable

to put into words my understanding; 

unable to understand all I hope to describe. 

When I catch, every now and then,

a glimmer and whisper of the mystery,

it transcends and eludes description

so that I bring back

not a word that isn’t wasted

on the language of our collectively

agreed upon, everyday assumptions,

turning my efforts into a love offering

recited solely to and for Him.

O child of God, you’re a poet

because you’ve taken the long way home.

The walk of faith

The walk of faith                                                                                       

All that is wrong with me, to begin with,

is that my fingers are misplaced on the keys.

Not one word I tap out in this world has any meaning.

Knowing only dimly anyway, what I’m trying to say –

something beyond thought, worthy of the effort,

far greater than all the reasonable, measured

descriptions I might adhere to  

concerning this mad riot of a world. 

I’m not talking about poetry.

I’m talking about the walk of faith.

What I write might not come to sense on paper

but perhaps my fingers will remember the pattern,

the message I hope to better decipher and deliver

once it’s spaced out properly onto the page.

O child of God, truth in the world’s tongue

loses most of its power and accessibility.  

Unimaginable grace

Unimaginable grace

O Lord, this ramshackle structure

into which I’ve settled –

it’s not plumb, level or square. 

Rain drips from the rafters;

thunder rattles the windows; cold winds

force their way through every crack.

I work feverishly to patch and repair,

rushing here and there – and wind up

exhausted among the catastrophes.

But, it’s my home – my shelter.  I built it. 

I own it, every board, shingle, stud and beam.

I nailed it together; poured the foundation

that is sinking now into the mire.

From these clouded windows, I look out

upon this inhospitable world.

Through these walls, I hear the cries

and laughter of my faceless neighbors.

O Meher, blessed was that spring morning

I first heard Your flute playing in the street!

With Your lovely melodies now, You try to coax me out.

Too frightened to move, I watch You, enraptured –

wondering what unimaginable grace brought You

          to my window.

O child of God, abandon that tumbledown shack

and flee to the true shelter of the Flute-player’s arms.

                                    (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)

That sort of love

That sort of love                                                                                         

It’s likely you have to go through

the nothing matters part entirely,

(down to absolutely nothing),

before you get to the love for God part,

where there’s nothing but love and no one

else to love but God.  I’m waiting,

I suppose, to be backed into that corner,

having not the strength, faith or courage

to freely tender my heart

to the uncertainty of that sort of love.

Don’t worry, said my Lord.  Nothing matters.

Not even the long list of my pretexts,

failures, compromises and cowardice

in this vast ignorance that apparently is me.

O child of God, how might you stitch together

the truth from the scraps of your inherent fear?

The path to Glory

The path to Glory                                                                                                

Ere I was born, I belonged to You.

Thirty years first on the framework, backdrop

of the Christ’s gospel – so strange a child;

fresh into manhood and the wicked world,

carving out a painful niche in the hillside.

Until a desperate leave-taking quest for peace –

learning at least the mechanics of suffering;

and (by Your grace) the revelation of my poverty.

Entering, at last, a long term relationship with the Old Man,

the Buddha and that original, childhood Jesus

on just those same terms of credulity and faith,

the remainder of my life knowing all I need to know

of the truth of You and Your new life, 

loaves-and-fishes, bread-and-wine Companionship.

O child of God, hark back to your beginnings.

The path to Glory is circular.

A jewel in the safe

A jewel in the safe

The poets among us praise the beauty of Your eyes.

I once, for a brief moment, gazed into those eyes.

What I found was Truth beyond beauty.

O Meher, You did not tell me the Truth!

It was there in Your eyes – beyond faith or doubt.

You did not tell me the Truth – You gave it to me –

wordlessly, hands quiescent at Your side.

No teachings, nothing to learn.

Or shall I say it this way:  With those elegant hands

You pulled Truth from my chest;

held it before me in open palms, then put it back

like a jewel returned to a safe in the wall.

It’s still there, though deeply buried, reminding me

of the moments spent with You in Eternity.

O child of God, lover and Beloved; inside and out;

          give and receive; faith and doubt –

these words have no meaning when Truth appears at the door.

                                  (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)

My human remains

My human remains                                                                                     

On my quest, the question first I posed:

Is it possible to live without fear?

God deigned (at His own fateful pace)

to answer.  Your soul is fearless, said He. 

It’s made of God’s stuff.  I’m afraid

because I continue to believe deeply

(no matter my profession of faith)

in myself more than my Creator;

in mind and body more than immortal soul.

And my one recourse in annulling that fear   

is to turn away now as best I might

from my human remains

to my intrepid, God-centered soul

and await (without question) His unworldly grace.

O child of God, to live without fear

is to live like the God within you.

The chitchat you make

The chitchat you make                                                                                 

All talk is idle, said my Lord (in His silence),

when it is not acted upon or lived up to.

I find myself standing mute these days,

straining to contain myself; refraining

from any further entanglement

in this great insubstantiality.

I’ve turned over to Meher my thoughts,

words and deeds.  I’m His responsibility now.

And all my idle talk of late

is contained in these poems,

an attempt to get near enough

to grasp the jouncing hem of His skirt.

O child of God, this poetry is the chitchat

you make awaiting the stroke of His sword.

A moon translucent

A moon translucent

Get lost, pilgrim, on your way to the Tomb.

Take a head count and find yours gone.

Like a ghost, tread the path between the white stones;

wet the dust with your phantom tears.

Blue and infinite is the sky above the dome;

the white shadow of a moon translucent.

Baba whispers to His lovers, Make yourself scarce –

when the true Light shows its eternal face.

Those roses on my Beloved’s stone?

The heart-shaped fragrance of His perfect fidelity.

His whispers now thrill the heart,

after the proscribed silence due a heedless world.

O child of God, question not the Master’s ways

but offer twofold worship: silence and praise.

                                 (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)

The most practical way

The most practical way                                                                              

You might love someone in spite of their faults

and then over time because of their faults. 

Attracted to them by an impression of courage

and later love them for their anxieties,

a lonely battle waged through sheer desperation.

You might pierce the facade to view a soul

who’s been given lifelong impediments,

worrisome tasks and such a piercing

might bring about love all the greater.

And someday, you might take another look

at yourself from an oddly pertinent perspective

and a new love just might bloom –

an acceptance and an understanding,

a surrender too deep for thought to explain.

O child of God, the most practical way to love God,

Meher Baba said, is to love our fellow beings.

My God-essence

My God-essence                                                                                         

The soul does not think, said Meher Baba.

Think of that!  All my thoughts

generated not by the Essence of my being, 

coming instead from the ego-mind –

not who I am, beyond my responsibility,

not to be seized upon or used judgmentally,

  

but warily observed and evaluated,

as they turn incrementally, (under my travail

and in His care) toward rectification,

eventually to be supplanted entirely

by the God-given grace of intuition,

more attuned to and aware of

the distinctions, in this treacherous realm,

between the false and the true.

O child of God, at some point every pilgrim

renounces the legitimacy of thought.

Now or later

Now or later

When You breathed life into Adam’s clay

it was so he would one day become dust at Your feet.

What a long journey we have undertaken!

And only, only to please You.

How narrow this path has become!

Why is it so difficult now to surrender our wills?

When we finally become helpless and hopeless,

we will only be acknowledging our chronic condition.

Once I believed in free will.  You showed me

the compulsion behind my choices.

Then, I believed we had only one choice, yes or no.

Now I believe the only choice we have is now or later.

Maybe there is not even that choice.

Maybe there is only You and Your game.

O child of God, why do you concern yourself with choices?

Every path leads down eventually to the Ocean of Love.

                                    (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)

Join the club

Join the club                                                                                                         

So you know not who you are.  

Join the club, o weary traveler. 

Nor where you are bound. 

Cheer up, my long lost friend! 

Even God (we are told), when He awoke

this time around could only groggily

ask of Himself – Who am I?

Surely we are meant to learn the answer –

to our question and God’s – simultaneously,

at the inevitable point of our ultimate culmination.

The answer to the question God asked first;

whispered into the back of everyone’s mind,

propelling our search for the answer; the whole driving force

behind our ceaseless desires, behind this infinite, circular,

eternally revolving inner and outer cosmos –

Who am I, o God?  Who am I and Who are You?

O child of God, it’s more than a question,

deserving of so much more than an answer.

Move your soul

Move your soul                                                                                          

I ask forgiveness (yet again). 

Inadvertently I have maligned Him –

disparaged my own cleverness, blamed

my inventive mind for my underdeveloped heart.

I forget in frustration that it is all a gift from God.

I could fall back upon that old guilt-ridden dichotomy –

   

the misappropriation of a divine bequest

for selfish ends, but I no longer believe

in separating myself from God’s involvement

nor His sovereignty, deeming any judgment

rendered on my own terms a misapprehension.

My cleverness, like every other endowment from God,

manifests His will and serves Him

(and me) ultimately in His divine game.

O child of God, you have been given all the attributes

you need to move your soul nearer to the goal.

A taking away

A taking away

I wanted to find my real Self.  You whispered

that I am You.  Now I am content.

Not that my heart believes such a Truth

but I am content to listen to such whisperings from You.

Content to be Your poor excuse for a slave;

sitting at Your feet – near enough to witness

Your purity and beauty; asking for nothing;

hoping one day to become the dust at Your feet.

That dust is worth more than any of its other forms –

gold, silver, diamonds . . . this body of mine.

I can’t make it through the rigors of the Path

but to become dust – perhaps, I could do that.

A taking away rather than an achieving –

perhaps, its possible.  God only knows.

O child of God, nearness to the Lord requires loss upon loss,

until there is nothing upon which to hang your hat.

                                          (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)

Your timid heart

Your timid heart                                                                                         

I’ve been headstrong on this path, I know;

refused to follow, refused to lead;

trekking my way alone if I must.

Envisioning my insights as revelation –

sacrosanct and peculiar to me.  Headstrong,

yet all the while, since I fell into Meher’s orbit,

longing to become heartstrong instead –

like Baba motioning to LePage:  Be mighty in My love! 

I have come lately to see I lack the equipment –

not like a rabbit wishing to be a bear,

more like a bear wishing to be a lion –

just as futile perhaps but not as far-fetched.

I am to continue pondering then – calculate,

surmise, question and opine; move nearer

to my Lord through my individual, God-given

relationship, attributes and talents, enough,

more than enough, to see me through

this lifetime and into the next.

O child of God, follow your destiny

and leave your timid heart to Meher.

An obscure remembrance

An obscure remembrance                                                                                     

Comes a point in every sojourn where comparable

is the world to cotton candy laced with razor blades.

Nothing but pain and injury in which to sink our teeth;

our tongues sated but hunger undiminished

by its gossamer, sugary nothingness while every

beautiful and meaningful thing is glimpsed

through the fleeting windows of an outbound train.

On the platform, cherished ones distantly holding

each other in our similarly impotent arms; at the mercy

ever of unassailable flesh, time and schedule.

It’s more than a delicate hope

that counters the dream’s insistence;

draws the sojourner to the eternal; more than fate –

the yearning of the part for the whole.

It is an obscure remembrance deeper than time;

the briefly beheld and faintly tasted lure

of a love beyond our humanity yet which is

the timeless, hinted at essence of our existence.

O child of God, transcendence is possible

once you lose your taste for sweetness.

Traveling incognito

Traveling incognito

Traveling together incognito.  At each checkpoint

You whisper, Let Me do the talking.

As You have taught, I was once stone.

Forgive the continued hardness of my heart.

Some noticed my silence during evening Arti.

I thought to add a drop of mine to the infinity of Yours.

At the threshold of my Beloved’s Tomb –

the madness of the world behind me and the silence within.

Make a tomb of your heart, You whisper to me.

Bow down to that silence.

Another body for the pyre.  Stack the wood precisely.

Pour the ghee!

When this sky wheels around to the proper position,

I will see the face of my Beloved.

O child of God, there’s an angel within, longing for Union.

Let him use your tongue.  Then, listen with all your heart.

                                     (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)