The fruition of His mercy

The fruition of His mercy                                                                                         
I have come to sow the seed of love
in your hearts, said my Lord,
 
and so I await the fruition of His mercy.
Love is not a decision to make.
 
I shall not be moved to love Him
(as He should be loved) by any calculation
 
nor all the willpower I might muster – not until
my heart-soil is sufficiently turned and broken.      
 
It’s not a task assigned, but a process to endure.
The hardscrabble illusion of my autonomy keeps that seed
 
(now merely a buried potential) from taking root,
until the moment (by God’s accord and schedule)
 
the soil crumbles, my heart expands, ripens, softens
to ultimately flower in its divine destiny.
 
O child of God, the attempt to love Him (in return)
stirs the latent, inchoate force within.

Nothing need be said

Nothing need be said                                                                                       
 
Down to two meditations now –
repetition of Meher Baba’s name
 
or the keeping, as near as possible
(inside and out) of a dust grain silence.
 
I dedicate them both to the One:
The name for His body made holy
 
by the nameless, infinite Mystery inhabiting it –
a bridge and key now (He has said) to our One true Self.
 
And the silence I keep – the silence of the pyre
before the sandalwood is ignited,
 
the silence of true annihilation, when I know
at last, nothing need be said
 
to the Omniscient One, the One
nearer than my own breath, the One
 
who makes me who I am, the One
to Whom He and I are not we.
 
O child of God, repetition of His name, like pure silence,
is a temporary pause in your relentless self-promotion.

Like the angels

Like the angels                                                                                       
 
Angels troubled the water
and left other evidence.
 
I asked you to rush me to the healing pool.
But the cure was already in my throat 
 
and the slow settling of my body
into the cradle of Your arms.     
 
Crookedness made straight;
the diseased made whole. 
 
How liberally flowed the blood and tears,
thinned by Your wine.
 
You’ve the remedy for my afflictions.
Everyone else is selling snake oil.
 
The angels were drawn to You –
to the nectar of Your Essence.
 
O Beneficent One!  Our destination is unimportant –
I’m one of Your entourage now, like the angels
 
crowding the sky above Your head, rushing
to keep pace with Your long, holy strides!        
 
O child of God, you’re in good company.
Stay hard on the heels of your Beloved.
 
                              (from A Jewel in the Dust, 2011)

A standing down

A standing down                                                                                             
 
The Zen Buddhists call it just sitting.
Meher advises the repetition of His name.
 
A Sufi might whirl instead, a monk contemplate.
Meditation is not a method of transcendence
 
or self-improvement.  It is merely a standing down,
allowing God to run the universe (alone) for a while –
 
a rest from obsessive judging and tampering.
It’s an obeisance, a demonstration of faith,
 
a consciously assumed vulnerability.
It’s a quiet, desireless surrender, awaiting
 
the moment God, at His sole discretion,
scoops you up and takes you back into the fold.
 
O child of God, meditation should never be
considered a method to gain God’s grace.  

Rough theory

Rough theory                                                                                                   
 
Words are defined (and therefore determined)
only by other words:  I must plunge
 
into the salt blue depths to learn
for myself what the ocean is. 
 
And then, it’s just a shallow fragment of the shore,
nothing on which to stake my soul.
 
Everything I know about existence
I have learned from others
 
(who have learned it from others). 
Every self-image I have
 
has been taken from those around me.
Truth, as I have encountered it,
 
is rough theory, hand-me-down estimations,
splintered concepts, watered-down experience.
 
I know nothing of any validity.  
I’m not large enough to hold the truth. 
 
So I cling desperately to my fragment
of shore and pray to the ocean,
 
daring not to open the sea-gates
and drown in the resulting tumult.
 
O child of God, the task is to unlearn
a lifetime of inherited knowledge.

The Mapmaker

The Mapmaker                                                                                     
 
A yielding in the chest as the ground gives way –
down to the roots, veins and stones
 
where the purest water collects.  You say
we come from the Ocean and I believe You –
 
things get too lonely and salt appears in the clay.
Remembrance of You is the only balm I’ve found
 
for this rasping away at the tender area of the heart.
Your human frame brought to mind –
 
instead of the Being-beyond-conception You are.
O Your body was conceived but who
 
could have conceived of You – 
infinite divinity fitted within the human flesh?
 
O child of God, when you feel lost in this world, remember
the Mapmaker hidden in the folds of your breast.

                                (from A Jewel in the Dust, 2011)

 

Wu wei

Wu wei                                                                                                            
 
The Old Man named it wu wei – non-doing,
effortless action; in tune with the Tao.
 
In the world but not of it, offered the apostle John.
Remember, said Meher.  I am the only Doer.
 
Follow yourself around, He is urging me now.
Learn what this hapless fellow is up to, moment to moment:
 
What thoughts have entered my head;
what decisions are being made, actions taken.
 
Accept neither credit nor blame for anything that occurs.
This attentiveness, linked with remembrance,
 
might be the only human freedom there is.
It may prove more significant to liberation
 
than any obeisance or endeavor made toward God.
An effortless non-attachment to the one I am not
 
might turn out to be the window of escape
to find out Who in heaven I really am.
 
O child of God, don’t forget to remember Meher
as you ceaselessly gather and glean, gather and glean.

Outside the dream

Outside the dream                                                                                            
 
This poetry is never quite true.
That doesn’t mean it’s worthless.  
 
It’s simply part of the dream. 
This poetry functions on many levels. 
 
I couldn’t tell you what they are.
There’s some truth to them, though;
 
they come (so I believe) from Reality, no more false
or true than anything else once it’s in the dream.
 
We can’t step outside the dream to view the dream.
We can’t step outside ourselves to view ourselves. 
 
We are always a creative part of what we see.
Reading this poem, it becomes a part of your dream,
 
a part of your truth, however erroneous it might be.
It becomes another part of the only
 
(somehow) dream there is –
both true and false; neither true nor false.
 
O child of God, speaking of the Mystery
your words become equivocal gibberish.

A thorough soaking

A thorough soaking                                                                               
 
All day long people talk to me,
but there’s seldom poetry on their lips.
 
Thousands of words and not one memorable line.
I’ve been given enough words, haven’t you?
 
You, of course, were poetry in motion –
the dance of Your hands, the grace
 
of Your stride.  How does One live so
that every gesture is a work of art?
 
I was never one to go looking for a guru,
but o what the passage of time can do!
 
Now that I have glimpsed Him, I look for my Guru
around every corner, behind every post.
 
Young atheists – hard and thin, like dried seeds –
but a thorough soaking might one day
 
produce a delicate blossoming.
Old atheists are exotic birds
 
whose odd structure and bright plumage
seem not to be evolved by the necessity of survival,
 
making me wonder how they ever came to be
and why and how they continue to exist.
 
O child of God, you have countless lifetimes left
to learn, in its entirety, the vast poetry of God.

                                (from A Jewel in the Dust, 2011)

 

The divinity of Meher

The divinity of Meher                                                                                      
 
He comes down now and then, the walking Word,
to take a stroll, speak to us in our own language,
 
suffer our ailments and limitations;
offering love as a way of life.
 
A presentment of God we might embrace,
garland, regard as companion,
 
a Saviour from our own milieu – rather than
the unimaginable, above-it-all Creator,
 
String-puller, distant Higher Power
from Whom it seems we shall always be apart.
 
Comes down to give tangible evidence
of the Love we yearn for, the God we fear,
 
the imperceptible veils that adorn us,
obscuring our own Godhood.
 
O child of God, to believe in the divinity of Meher
is to believe in your own divinity. 

Such a game as this

Such a game as this                                                                                          
 
My love for You is tainted by desire
for an end to such a game as this;
 
tainted by the fear of further suffering,
disillusionment, shame and grief
 
for myself and my loved ones; for us all.
And there’s my dependency upon Your wine,
 
my desperate need for Your companionship.
Ask for nothing, said Meher, and receive everything.
 
But first, apparently, I must learn to ask
myself for nothing, the world for nothing,
 
that I may come to You empty and untainted,
nothing to lay at Your feet
 
but a hopeless faith in Your majesty
and a relinquishing of all authority to You.
 
O child of God, pure love is a gift from God,
the bridge from non-existence to divinity.

Fish out of water

Fish out of water                                                                         
 
That which is beyond imagination and conception –
call It the Ocean of Love to get a handle on It.
 
I am drawn to the Ocean –
where there’s no friction;
 
no property, no boundaries or partitions.
I’m weary of the animal coming out,
 
in myself and others, barking,
snarling through bared teeth.
 
I’m ready for the flood
to leave us paddling about
 
until we exhaust ourselves
and sink to the bottom.
 
You, of course, were a Fish out of water, a Pisces,
showing us how to be Piscean –
 
moving through this here-and-now
Ocean of Love gracefully strong,
 
lithe, colorful,
eyes unblinking to the Truth,
 
going about Your business –
the silent expression of Who You are.
 
O child of God, the Beloved, closer than your breath,
invites you to drown in His Ocean of Love.

                                 (from A Jewel in the Dust, 2011)

The solace of eternity

The solace of eternity                                                                                       
 
This body is being consumed by age
but I’m left untouched –
 
my Beloved is introducing me to eternity.
A lifespan is comparable to the wink of an eye –
 
in brevity and gravity –
having something to do
 
with sand grains and the spin of planets,
the span of stars, crumbling atoms, eroding flesh.
 
I remain untouched.  Any urgency is presently
soothed and replaced by patience and trust.
 
Eternity has allowed me a certain serenity,
the faith and assurance that I will,
 
over (illusory) time, inevitably shed my loneliness,
reach God and even learn what love is all about.
 
O child of God, you have all the time
in the world, in existence, in eternity.

 

A brief, shared shelter

A brief, shared shelter                                                                                      
 
There is a brief, shared shelter available here on earth,
as much as I can gather it around me,
 
a foretaste, a settling down where nothing
pricks or prods, clings or entices, where nothing
 
derails, undermines, crushes or disturbs.
To enter this realm is to let go of the world,
 
to let go of myself and hold to You;
pretend, until I learn, I am not at all the shadows
 
I’ve been taught I am but the eternal,
infinite, holy essence of non-duality.
 
O child of God, the less of you,
the more room for peace and acquiescence.

A host of angels

 A host of angels                                                                         
 
Billions of souls afloat in the cosmos
and I’m on my way home.
 
Like the brother in the field,
I dropped my scythe where I stood.
 
There’s another harvest I must attend –
where I’ll be cut off at the knees.
 
My horse has gotten a whiff of the barn.
Nothing can keep me now from my Beloved’s gate.
 
My name in His throat, the name He gave me,
ages ago, when I was first sent out --
 
a host of angels over my shoulder
and the highway rising up to greet me.
 
Billions of laboring souls lost in the maze,
          tossing in feverish sleep
and my Beloved has come to awaken me;
 
billions of souls drunken from rage, lust and hate
and my Beloved offering His sobering wine.
 
O child of God, look beyond this ephemeral existence
into the ageless face of your Beloved. 

                                         (from A Jewel in the Dust, 2011)

A new life

A new life                                                                                                       
 
Dear to me, this tumbledown shack,
for its companionship, comfort and shelter.
 
Inexorably it is eroding away.
Abandon it now, my Lord is urging.
 
Wish to be concealed no longer.
Forsake whoever in the world I am.
 
Leave my loved ones, my companions
(as soon I must), shut tightly the door
 
and make this last little stretch
of open road my homestead,
 
following the One Who has come to free me
from the need of every comfort and shelter,
 
to join Him among the elements and the essentials,
in a new life under the open skies.
 
O child of God, the new life can only be lived
when there is no one left to live it.

Love for God

Love for God                                                                                                   
 
The radio plays another top forty tune
featuring the words faithful, true, forever, –
 
our romantic, love-obsessed culture,
celebrating the brief (however time is measured)
 
thrill and heartache of one human being’s
passionate attachment to another.  
 
But the love for God that Meher exhorts us to realize
is a consummate non-attachment,
 
the cultivation of an interior relationship
liberating the lover from all the extraneous others.
 
This last duplicity ultimately coming to naught
as our separative existence is absorbed into the One.
 
O child of God, abandon a world in which
the word love has lost any real meaning.

Mighty opus

Mighty opus                                                                                         
 
An eternity of silence, then God sang …
suns and planets, stars and moons;
 
sang rivers and mountains, wind and rain.
Sang the garden, Adam and Eve.   Sang Iblis;
 
let loose a multitude of angels to flood this world –
all from the nothingness lodged in His throat –
 
light and dark, cold and heat, large and small,
inner and outer – reverberating, dividing,
 
spinning and expanding --
on the sole Sound of His Holy Voice.
 
When God entered again this Song-existence
He nestled into Your cozy body and kept silent;
 
let His love do the singing inside of You.
What note could He add to His perfect composition?
 
Only silence – a strategic pause
in the mighty opus of creation.
 
O child of God, the Beloved in this advent kept silent.

God listened to His own perfection and added nothing. 

                                  (from A Jewel in the Dust, 2011)

Best keep mum

Best keep mum                                                                                                
 
I speak less these days, ever since
I heard myself from across the room,
 
not so much the import but the timbre,
as if my voice were descending from the rafters
 
or arrowing across the distance
to pin someone against the wall. 
 
Ashamed that that adamancy should come   
from me and ever be heard by anyone. 
 
I don’t speak with my Lord’s kindliness
and until I do, I best keep mum.
 
One day, I pray that whenever I speak,
my voice will come from under His sandal heel.
 
O child of God, pray for the sort of love
that will make you abandon words entirely.

The flame of a torch

The flame of a torch                                                                                        
 
My Lord is leading me by example
and persuasion inexorably into silence.
 
What could I ever pray aloud
that God doesn’t already know?
 
What could my false self ever tell that isn’t a lie?
What advice could I give not born of ignorance?
 
What opinions could I offer others
that aren’t manipulative and self-centered?
 
Doesn’t silence speak volumes anyway?
Is not a smile and embrace,
 
a hand on the shoulder,
a deep look into the eyes
 
more communicative than the spoken word?
And what words ever directly
 
come from the inarticulate heart     
rather than the ever calculating head?     
 
O child of God, trade in your words for the ability
to whisper and crackle like the flame of a torch.

 

Three garlands

Three garlands                                                                            
 
Each morning now I climb the Hill; offering
three strings of rose-scented prayers,
 
standing just northeast of Infinity
with a view of Your lying-down darshan;
 
lift my eyes to wonder at the vaulted structure
under which I pray –
 
the muscular, veined roof
of the cavern of my heart;
 
Your sun, also, rising over my shoulder,
my heart's walls turning translucent,
 
thinner and thinner like beaten gold
to one day burst and flood
 
the parched valley below.
Each morning I awaken in Maya,
 
climb this Hill, wherever I am,
garlands pressed to my chest,
 
delivering to the stone divan
of Your lying-down darshan,
 
three garlands – the rose-scented passages
of Your everyday, holy prayers.
 
O child of God, you dream of India.
The Samadhi's path begins at the doorsteps
      of your own heart's abode.

                           (from A Jewel in the Dust, 2011)

Gazing at the moonrise

Gazing at the moonrise                                                                                    
 
I should be sitting cross-legged by now,
like a high old monk, not a thought in the world
 
nor a question in mind, gazing at the moonrise
above the shadowed vale; blending in mutely
 
with God’s majesty and beauty.
Truly, what better way to spend my time?
 
Preferable to my polished routine down here,
my old song and dance, playing to the crowd;
 
my sweat and scuffle, trying to leave my mark upon the world –
like the spray-painted graffiti on those mountain stones.
 
But my legs won’t fold up like that anymore
or carry me up a mountainside, so I sit
 
in my darkened house to mingle if not quite merge
with the Mystery in a shuteye, heart to heart communion
 
upon the jagged edge of the mountain,
above the endless vales within;
 
my ancient Self rising with that distant moon,
receiving and reflecting His holy light.
 
O child of God, how peaceful is the pilgrim
whose Companion has taken him by the hand.

The way of God known as me

The way of God known as me                                                                         
 
There’s a path but no pilgrim.
Picture him as a soul or a self
 
and for lack of a better word, name him ‘me’.
A journey without a place to get to;
 
called a journey because nothing ever stands still.
Unique to every soul – the way of God known as me.
 
There has never been, never will be, any errors or delays.
Everything is merely the element of a scheduled destiny.
 
A journey without a sojourner –
the way of God known as me.
 
O child of God, your every word
binds you to the sticky web of duality.

To this day

To this day                                                                                            
 
The Master gave me bread
broken by His own hands;
 
dipped and stained in pungent wine.
The drunkenness faded, but to this day,
 
His bread nourishes my soul.
The sand and stone of my native soil
 
brings forth His greenery.
A makeshift shelter, a begging bowl;
 
tongue and throat to sing His praises --
for what more could I ask? 
 
This sobriety is subtly sweeter
than any intoxication I’ve ever known.
 
O child of God, sing to your Beloved
that you might lighten His face with a smile.

                           (from A Jewel in the Dust, 2011)