The powers that be

The powers that be                                                                      

My house is lonely tonight.
I step into the backyard –
 
fenced in, sub-divided;
stars fixed above the trees,
 
the moon turning its cold shoulder.
I feel small, over-looked, left behind
 
in the vastness.  After a time, I notice
the moon shadows crossing the lawn –
 
I am getting somewhere –
in spite of myself. 
 
The earth turning me, hurtling me
around the sun, also, on a journey
 
toward its ultimate destiny.
I might seem inert, broken down,
 
stuck in an ineffectual rut but,  
eternal forces are ever rushing me,
 
in their own sweet time, toward a rendezvous.
My choice – to have faith in the benevolence
 
of the powers that be
or, lack faith and despair
 
as I languish behind the high, sturdy fence
I have erected for myself.
 
O child of God, don’t worry, be happy. 
Despair, in any case, will gain you nothing.

The silent Christ

The silent Christ                 

The silent Christ spoke only with His eyes –

hanged from an invisible cross.

His sheep not scattered but, becoming lions

and dragons, becoming torches

roaming the night.  The silent Christ

marveled at the intricacies of His own effort

and the trouble God took for just one Word.

Spoke with His eyes, His blood, bones,

heart and brain to call forth loudly

His children from the wilderness

which has enveloped them

to His table of bread and wine.

The silent Christ lies in sweet repose

as the hue and cry of the world echoes

and fades around Him, His work completed

one hundred percent, His silence going about now,

methodically, drowning out   

the blasphemies of the world.

O child of God, be silent yourself.  Don’t speak

of things you know so very little about.

Your silent veracity

Your silent veracity                                                                         

Images flow from Your hands

through the medium of silence

to impress, expose and illustrate

the nothingness of the dream

while I hurry down a different road,

trusting to the flesh of the heart

and other charlatans and infidels

in this world of sham and glamour.

The truth of Your eloquence

(some forty-four years of exquisite silence)

becomes, in these latter years,

more acutely precise, glaringly apparent

in the light of Your beauty, purity

and Your ceaseless, silent veracity.

O child of God, as Truth is beyond words,

so Illusion is beyond any substance or sustenance.

  

The heart's sovereignty

The heart’s sovereignty                                                                 

Mary of Bethany broke the alabaster box

and with spikenard anointed Jesus,

some of His disciples grumbling at the expense

but, Jesus said, She hath wrought a good work.

O child, an imperfection of character

is the desire to be perfect

and a detriment to the path of surrender. 

To covet virtue is a sin – for covetousness is a sin.

Desire, instead, to be obedient and humble.

Non-attachment is the back road to perfection.

Desire for perfection leads through a labyrinth

of pride, shame and self-involvement

while acceptance of imperfection

constitutes a stirring turn toward surrender.

O lover, spill innocently, like Mary,

the precious oil; anoint the head of Jesus

and be marked forever as a lover

and loyal subject of the heart’s holy sovereignty.