And the Word was God

And the Word was God

Small word -- god.  Like a grunt,
a groan breaking from our throats.

Capitalized, modified by the pious. 
Used profanely by sinners.

Forgive us, God, this small begrudged word
wedged into our vocabulary as an afterthought.

Words of worldliness: pleasure, flesh, riches,
savored by our mouths: luxury, lavish; sexuality,

sumptuousness, triumph, lasciviousness . . . .
O pilgrim, take god -- that hard nugget of a word

and nurture it in your core
until it breaks you open,

breaks your world apart,
until a tree from its seed grows,

stretches, brushes leaves and branches
against the farthermost ends

of your thoughts, depths, faith,
experience and imagination.

O child of God, in the beginning was the Word . . .
and the Word was God.

The last resort

The last resort

Most people come to You
(You have said) as a last resort.

There's a fundamental wounding
in coming to You, a violation of the self

in even our most timid of intimacies with God
or any of His manifestations.

In Your infinite mercy, You draw us past
our intuited fear and allow us our first

quavering steps toward annihilation,
gathering us in, tucking us under Your wing.

But, even after we become Your lovers,
years later, we often come to You

in pain and fear only when our most familiar
worldly comforts have been tried,

exhausted and found wanting,
our last resort yet . . . because

within every surrender, every intimacy with God,
incrementally, now and then, here and there,

moment to moment, there is a fundamental
wounding, a violation of the self as we move

so timidly -- a gesture, a word, a few steps,
an embrace -- closer to our own annihilation.

O child of God, come unto the Ancient One,
the last resort, the final refuge of the soul.

 

Love interest

Love interest 

Existence You compare to a motion picture
with God playing every role.

You, of course, are the love interest.
When Your face hits the screen

every pulse quickens.
Let the storylines get too sad, predictable

and You are thrown into the mix,
to stir up the plot by espousing

the most difficult task in existence.
Love God, You say.  Love God.

Again and again, You enter the picture
to round out and soften

God's rough edges, awaken
the human heart to love.  To love.

You make it easy -- so that we might begin
our arduous approach to God;

to love God, to become God,
to become God the Beloved.

O child of God, impossible to love the self;
next to impossible to love the Self.

The illusion of God's absence

The illusion of God's absence

The rich have their diamonds and pearls;
the poor -- the moon and stars;

the pauper emerges from a cramped hovel,
peers upward into a starry night

going on forever.  Upon every doorstep --
the infinite sky, the eternal now,

filling us up everywhere we turn
upon the spectrum of agony to ecstasy.

The Lord is our shepherd we shall not want.
Every brimful moment -- we shall not want.

No one is slighted; no one goes without.
Our inheritance -- our just and proper due --

life in minutia, in all extremes,
the essence and price of being human.

Preference creates the illusion of want.  Judgement
and desire create the illusion of God's absence.

O child of God, cultivate indiscriminate gratitude;
purchase Oneness with the jewel of desirelessness.

O child of God, in the stone's crevice
shall bloom the perfect rose.