Beyond faith

Beyond faith                                                                                              
 
No man sees My face and lives, God told Moses.
No wonder I can’t see myself in the Infinite One,
 
Who I’ve been told (and accept by faith) I truly am.
To get to the truth, I must move beyond faith (and self) –
 
death a requirement, a divestiture
of who I have ever in this lifetime
 
taken myself to be, every drop and whit,
wont and whim, every ache and fancy
 
of the pretender who bears my name and history.
To look then into the eyes of my Beloved,
 
hand Him myself the sword
of which I have been so long afraid.
 
O child of God, make use of every holy word
and image to spur you on toward the precipice.

Ghost of a chance

Ghost of a chance                                                                         
 
I’m trapped in the paws of a Lion,
both plaything and prey,
 
desperate to learn His every
whim and idiosyncrasy.
 
I’ve fallen into a raging river;
don’t expect me home for dinner tonight!
 
Under Your fire, the red sands
of my heart have turned to glass.
 
Set it down roughly in this world of stone.
I haven’t the ghost of a chance.
 
Before I’m shattered, fill me with light –
let purity and clarity define my shape.
 
O child of God, trust not the vagaries of intellect;
view Him through the wine-red lens of your heart.

The truth of the mirror

The truth of the mirror                                                                              
 
The crooked shall be made straight
and the rough ways made smooth – scripture
 
of great comfort to one twisted and coarse,
pent within a shell I’ve been unable
 
to peck my way through. 
Made straight and smooth –
 
but only after facing entirely
the degree of my crooked roughness.
 
Standing up to the truth of the mirror,
releasing one-by-one the makeshift
 
sticks and stems, fig leaves and rags
which conceal me from no one but my trembling self.
 
O child of God, take heart in your every pang.
New birth requires a long, doleful labor.

Lofty and forlorn

Lofty and forlorn                                                                            
 
I’m utterly lost.  Why am I still looking for shortcuts?
I don’t know where I’m going or where I’ve been,
 
but You’ve walked out to greet me,
leaving the gate unlatched.
 
These roads are lofty and forlorn;
the way to Your gate, narrow and winding.
 
I quake and quaver when I hear only my voice
echoing through these empty hills.
 
You are my sole confidant.  Where I end up;
what happens along the way, is Your responsibility now.
 
Perhaps, this is where love begins –
on the side of a mountain –
 
or accumulates along the way,
as we ascend, my Beloved and I.
 
O child of God, the path unfolds directly before you.
Be concerned only where you next place your foot.

                                    (from A Jewel in the Dust, 2011)

This lucidity

This lucidity                                                                                                        
 
Comes a point where you see yourself
much as God sees you,
 
as others feel you, roughly
rubbing up against them;
 
how your ego has played you for a fool
all your days, how blind you have been
 
(in over your head) to your own faults
and ruinous behavior and it doesn’t end there,
 
this lucidity – it comes and goes,
as you awaken and nod off again,
 
in this lifelong, ages-old habit and dream of self. 
Praising your Lord for His revelations and solace,
 
bearing the shame of your insufficiency, 
getting on with your life solely for His sake,
 
more aware each day of the difficulty of liberation
and how utterly undeserving of it you are.
 
O child of God, everyone, said Meher,
(including you), is destined for the supreme goal.

(drawing by Rich Panico)

Shoebox

Shoebox                                                                                         
 
What straightforward thing, square and true,
ever comes from a crooked man in a crooked house?
 
I’m innocent of only one thing – my attraction to You.
That was Your doing.
 
I left my apartment for a pack of cigarettes
          and never went back.
I rounded the corner and was gone!
 
Turning corner after corner, thoroughly bewildered.
I left my valuables in a shoebox on the top shelf,
 
but I’ve lost the street address.
Randomly knocking on doors
 
while You wait in the back of a Nash Rambler.
Only You hold the key.
 
O child of God, lost your bearings?
Everywhere you go the Beloved is there.

                                  (from A Jewel in the Dust, 2011)

The lowdown

The lowdown                                                                                               
 
I’m being dragged off my high horse,
to get the lowdown – estrangement from God is not
 
just this tender ill-fitting within the human skin,
not just a death sentence, or the mind’s torment,
 
not just a shuttered, malformed heart
strapped to this one hapless soul
 
but a corruption and a contagion
sowing its seeds of anguish everywhere I go.
 
O child of God, you are in the Master’s hands.
Some disclosures hurt worse than others.

drawing by Rich Panico

Butcher's block

Butcher’s block                                                                              
 
Early each morning Your Tomb is wiped down
like a butcher’s block; sanskaras removed
 
from the surfaces and crevices, residue
of shattered hearts, splintered egos, broken minds
 
cleared for the new day’s filth and muck
laid at Your feet, hefted onto Your shoulders,
 
returned to the nothingness which they are
and from which they came.
 
O child of God, you sense the mystery of His Samadhi,
but the work that occurs there daily, you can never comprehend. 

                                     (from A Jewel in the Dust, 2011)

My heart

My heart                                                                                                    
 
My heart is a dust-laden bell,
long time silent, ensconced in a tower
 
of a snowed-in chapel at the woods’ edge,
ashes cold in the hearth,
 
no footprints leading to or from.
My heart is an unused muscle
 
aching at the least exertion and stretch –
tender, quaking, ineffectual.
 
My heart is keen for the spring breeze
this winter to break its immobile silence.
 
God is nearing my house and I want that bell
to swing, shine and sing at His arrival;
 
a roar in the hearth; my limber, compliant heart
stretched out in the warmth like a doormat at His feet.
 
O child of God, it’s a painful journey
from head to heart, from fear to love.

Human clot

Human clot                                                                                               
 
I offered my begging bowl.
You filled it with wine.
 
I remain poor, but no longer care,
drunk on the richness of Your wine.
 
Deep in my bowl, for the first time –
a glimmer of hope.
 
This intoxication is the gateway to a vineyard
where the Spirit soars, the human clot left in the dust.
 
I know to Whom this vineyard belongs!
I will sing drunkenly under the heavens
 
His holy name, near its narrow gate,
until He appears to lead me inside.
 
O child of God, abandon yourself in this beggar’s bowl
to one day wander His holy vineyard.

                                (from A Jewel in the Dust, 2011)
 

Making a living

Making a living                                                                                          
 
I was once a working man, hands strong,
calloused from the rub of making a living.
 
Also grown thick, toughened up –
my heartskin within its cavern and cage,
 
leathery from the world’s rough handling.
My hands today are soft as a baby’s –
 
clean, idle, while my heart is daily
more tender and sore as it emerges
 
from its enclosure, more willing
to take in the ache of flesh and world
 
as it suits my Lord’s will – a blessed penance
and the required estrangement from self
 
on the long journey through and beyond
this clamorous Illusion to that hidden Sanctuary.
 
O child of God, retire from the world
and open your heart to the eternal.

Unspent coins

Unspent coins                           

                                                       

You unlatched my change purse;
poured its contents onto the table between us.
 
‘It must be empty’, You explained.
‘How can a slave own a heart full of hope?’
 
Unspent coins of solace and fantasy;
disappointment and envy.
 
When I began to surrender these coins
I discovered them to be counterfeit,
 
imprinted with an imposter’s face,
their taste bitter between my teeth.  
 
Empty my purse, Lord;
fill it as You please.
 
O child of God, hope is spent on false comfort.
In Illusion’s reign, it’s the coin of the realm.

                                   (from A Jewel in the Dust, 2011)

Through the moves

Through the moves                                                                                    
 
You’ve chosen this dance for us,
out on a darkened floor where
 
no one knows my body language
but the One Who brought me here,
 
the One I so desperately want to leave with.
You’ve become a long shot.
 
In our clinched intimacy, I readily confess
my perplexity, my fear, my faith.
 
If there was any possible escape
I might try to slip through an exit
 
but You, in Your mercy, have sealed my fate
as we face the music in a loose embrace –
 
Your features lost in the shadows;
I, inelegantly, trying to follow Your lead.
 
O child of God, hold tightly to your Beloved
as He takes you through the moves.

Your dharmashala

Your dharmashala                                                                         
 
How narrow this path has become!
Adjusting to it, I also am narrower.
 
I tend to the world’s business,
but my heart’s no longer in it.
 
My heart is with You
in a Tomb on the Deccan Plain.
 
Lord, let me rest
in Your dharmashala. 
 
Let me lie in that Tomb
until I am carried to my own.
 
O child of God, become smaller and smaller
to one day disappear within the vastness of God.

                                (from A Jewel in the Dust, 2011)

The book of the heart

The book of the heart                                                                                  
 
You thumb through my heart on occasion,
never bothering to read it, not from disinterest
 
but because You know so well the story,
written there even before its pages
 
had formed into flesh and blood –
ruffling my emotions, upending my complacency,
 
stirring more vigorously my longing.
One day You promise to let me read it –
 
my own heart-book – when it’s wide open enough
to reveal (by Your promise) the mystery of life.
 
O child of God, Meher came to retrieve (for your study)
that ancient, hidden book of the heart.

Seclusion Hill

Seclusion Hill                                                                                 
 
I climbed alone Seclusion Hill,
leaning into the strong winds
 
where You accomplished
Your Manonash work
                                                                                                     
in that little asbestos hut.
Annihilation of the Mind –
 
throne and root of all these problems.
O Beloved, it's Your strong winds
 
supporting me now.  They call out:
‘Climb the Hill within your chest.
 
Pare down from the Mind’s duplicity
to your one True Self.’   
 
O child of God, in deep seclusion He labored
that we might rise to true solitude.
 

                                    (from A Jewel in the Dust, 2011)