The path to heaven

The path to heaven                                                                                          
 
To escape Pharaoh’s decree,
the mother of Moses (a daughter of Levi)
 
took for him an ark of bulrushes
and daubed it with slime and pitch,
 
laid it in the flags by the river's brink.
The Avatar offers an opportunity
 
to place all our fragile hopes into one basket,
where they become our earnestly gathered faith,
 
no more to be who we thought we were,
nor inhabit a world we took to be home.
 
Our surrender is then utterly of ourselves
forsaking all prior comforts, habits,
 
commitments and desires, abandoning forever
a realm which affords no peace, certitude or refuge. 
 
O child of God, the path to heaven ends abruptly
and must be leapt across.

My heart is slain

My heart is slain
 
A house divided against itself –
how much longer can it stand?
 
My heart is slain, but my head refuses the news.
Somewhere in the galaxy, a star has collapsed;
 
my eyes still collect its distant light.
I tend this life as if it belongs to me;
 
direct and question the way
as if I hold the reins.
 
My heart is slain, but my head keeps wondering
why its schemes and dreams come to naught.
 
O child of God, your fate is sealed.
Head and body will follow soon the way of your heart.

                                     (from A Jewel in the Dust, 2011)

One true faith

One true faith                                                                                                   
 
At times I refer to Meher Baba
as my Saviour but it’s not quite true.
 
What portion of me has He ever promised to save?
Not even a casket-sized haven for a body
 
returning to dust (just the same with Him or without).
Not the small delusive mind crammed into my skull,
 
nor its cohort, the bewildered heart in its cage –
each the root of all ignorance and mischief –
 
enabling the seemingly endless wheel of birth and death.
Nothing as ethereal as my soul will He save
 
which (by His word) has never been in danger.
No, no, my Lord promises not to rescue
 
one jot or tittle of myself
when the illusion dissolves
 
which is the sum total
of me and mine and who I am.
 
Nothing to be salvaged, kept or saved
and within that nothing He promises everything.
 
O child of God, trade in all your hopes
and fears for the one true faith.

God's throat and ear

God’s throat and ear                                                                             
 
Mohammed crawled into the cave of His heart
          and began to sing.
What came out was God’s music.
 
Gabriel taught Him the verses,
then, sat enraptured at His feet.
 
In the desert bloomed the oasis of Islam;
stars crowding the dome of His mosque.
 
When You returned, O Ancient One,
You chose silence.
 
Maybe the kiss and stone gave You the clue –
or Tajuddin’s perfect rose.
 
Aware of what had become of Your words,
You sang to God with Your hands.
 
O child of God, praise the song of Meher Baba,
Who has captured God’s throat and ear.

                                    (from A Jewel in the Dust, 2011)

The faith-ending proof

The faith-ending proof                                                                                    
 
Not a plea nor petition, but praise
is the proper approach to prayer,
 
arranged so as not to contain
a single reference to I, me, my or mine,
 
described by my Lord as the fixed die
at the core of all heartache,
 
the primordial illusion that begets all others.
When we praise God how much of it
 
is yet pretend and hope, born of fear?
Each of our words driving another wedge
 
into the fragile boundary between heaven and earth.
How might we breach it instead?
 
Open the flood gates of His holy Spirit to drown again
our souls in Him as they were before the beginning?
 
O child of God, praise Him in imperfect faith
until your Father provides the faith-ending proof. 

A few lucid moments

A few lucid moments                                                                            
 
‘Nothing matters but love for God.’
Those words meant little to me
 
until I perceived them as a threat.
O Beloved, You’ve given Yourself carte blanche!
 
Nothing is sacred to You
but the all-encompassing Goal.
 
Wandering the ruins, I found the shelter
          of that statement –
devoid of floor, walls or roof, but with a foundation
          grounded in Reality.
 
Your physical presence was a Truth like that.
As Dreyfuss said, ‘A few lucid moments in the dream of my life.’
 
Sometimes, in shallow sleep, I sense the sky
          above this illusion
and long to break the surface, gulping down
          pure draughts of air.
 
O child of God, everyone has collapsed into deep slumber.
Surely, the Compassionate Father will bear His children home.

                                     (from A Jewel in the Dust, 2011)

Look homeward

Look homeward                                                                                         
 
I am a crooked man;
I walk a crooked mile.
 
I got crooked on the rock pile,
a lifetime of turning stones into rubble.
 
Pardoned now from the world racing by,
I repair dutifully each morning
 
to my studio across the stone green patio
where once more I return to my art,
 
my profession, stretching my crooked back
and blue-veined hands
 
to sculpt and mold the selected, marvelous,
lovely-veined marble into angel faces
 
to grace the graves of those truly dead;
to dream in my dead sleep of the straight and true
 
and the meticulous, love-centered
turning of rubble into dust.
 
O child of God, as Wolfe once urged his angel –
look homeward; look homeward.

 

God's face

God’s face  (a firsthand account from Mandali Hall)                               
                  
A certain inmate in an Indian asylum        
spent every waking moment trying to keep
          his feet from touching the floor.
 
With great effort, in amazing positions;
in unimaginable strain, everywhere he moved,
 
he kept his feet aloft.  The slightest brush of a toe
on the dirt floor brought wails of remorse.
 
Torn with pity, an intern knelt before him.
‘Please, put your feet down.”
 
‘There’s no room,’ he replied.
‘It’s a large space . . . anywhere here . . .’
 
‘There’s no room,’ he repeated.
‘Everywhere I would put my foot, I see God’s face.’
 
O child of God, what are your petty complaints,
compared to the agony and bliss of one
          who sees God?

Fanciful figures

Fanciful figures                                                                                          
 
God awoke and switched on the bedside lamp,
wondering Who the sleeper was –
 
and His infinite Self has ever since been responding.
One became two, then fluoresced into numberless existence.
 
In the (beginningless) beginning, the Word was God
but God issued the Word and all manner of things
 
were alight and shaped into being within the formless pitch.
Or say a Whim stirred the infinite Quiescence 
 
and, in transition, illusory bubbles
provisionally blinded and estranged each drop.
 
None of this is the unutterable Truth, of course –
only fanciful figures we’ve been given
 
by Those in the know, mercifully to assuage
our rootless, lonely, peripatetic selves.
 
O child of God, before God woke up there was
no consciousness nor anything of which to be conscious.

(painting by Mark Hodges)

Half house

Half house                                                                                        
 
These piles of stones, this half house –
is it being built . . . or torn down?
 
What is courage, o pilgrims, without adversity?
Without disillusionment, how would we find faith?
 
Without transgressions could we ever know grace?
Selflessness requires a dismantling.
 
Love involves separation and sacrifice.
Through suffering, we let go this realm to grasp another.
 
Without the Godman, what inkling
would we have of the deeper reality within us?
 
If there were no Master,
Who would show us the Way?
 
O child of God, don’t try to reason your way to surrender.
Use the mind only to fortify your heart’s resolve.

The light of You

The light of You                                                                                         
 
You’re the Lord of Light; I live in shadow.
Something’s come between us, Lord.  
 
So thoroughly You know my darkness. 
So ignorant am I of Your Light
 
(except its promise) and blind even to myself. 
Humility, purity and love are wonderful words
 
I hear and say in prayer and often wonder
how their truth would feel coming out of me.
 
I’m that little bit of nothing to Your everything;
a stone adrift in space.  How silent
 
and lonely this far out, Lord! 
You hear my pleas (You promise),
 
while I am (stone) deaf
to Your Self-assured, eternal song of love. 
 
How will my darkness and density
ever be dispelled by the light of You
 
when something’s come between us, Lord,
that only You have the will and power to remove?
 
O child of God, when you feel utterly helpless
your faith has a chance to grow.

(drawing by Rich Panico)

 

The rasp of Your bow

The rasp of Your bow                                                            
 
O Beloved, like an old coat,
You hung me in the corner.
 
Now I’m collecting dust.
If I could only feel You
 
snug within me once more!
A fiddle mounted on the wall,
 
no music comes from me.
O to feel the rasp of Your bow!
 
Tuck me under Your chin;
let’s play a round or two!
 
A lump of clay once rolled in Your palms,
left unformed, hardening by the hour.
 
O to feel myself shaped by Your hands, 
as Your hands once shaped the language of Love.
 
O child of God, adjust yourself to the Beloved’s whims.
Believe it when He says He never leaves. 

                               (from A Jewel in the Dust, 2011)

This rare sort of love

This rare sort of love                                                                                  
 
I’m used to it now – this slow,
waist-deep fording of the river;
 
the occasional sinkhole stumble; coming up
breathless, sober, fighting to keep my head
 
above water, my footing in the current’s sweep. 
But where once was (invariably) panic
 
there is now forbearance
and the knowledge of His ways.
 
Through devotion to a Perfect One,
comes the revulsion of self
 
and the effort of effacement
as desires of innumerable lifetimes
 
are pared down to the one –
to know this rare sort of love, His love,
 
while still in the human body,
feet planted firmly upon terra firma.
 
O child of God, when you stumble upon this love,
rid yourself of everything standing in your way.

 

Orange robe

Orange robe

Standing on his clothes, Pukar offered
his naked self to the Beloved.
 
He spent the remainder of his life
studying true nakedness; true surrender.
 
Last night a monk escaped the tower of piety;
shimmied down the wall on a ladder
 
made from shreds of his orange robe.
By moonlight, he was last seen naked
          among a tangle of briars.
 
O pilgrim, the currency of your government 
is worthless on this side of the border.
 
If you stop wailing long enough, you’ll discover
the jewels sewn into the lining of your coat.
 
How long will you persist in this folly –
trying to make sense of this realm
          and your position in it?
 
O child of God, surrender involves the unknown
          and unexpected.
Bewilderment is the treasure your Beloved
          has bestowed.
 

                       (from  A Jewel in the Dust, 2011)