Remnants of
the Way
Once the
Way is lost, Lao Tzu taught,
then comes
virtue – birthing innumerable sins,
the
far-reaching and the trivial –
pride,
disdain, judgment,
envy,
division, exclusion . . .
inevitably
creating its opposite;
setting up
the incessant battle within.
All because
we have strayed
from the
original mandate; abandoned God
as constant
Companion, inner arbiter and guide,
creating
instead our own world
from the
remnants of the Way,
striving
without wisdom, purity or strength
to live by
(and constantly failing) our own rules.
O child of
God, the Way, the Truth and the Life
is the lost
inheritance of each soul.
An ocean away
I’ve been to India many
times.
I’ve never felt at ease
there.
It’s the oppressive,
ubiquitous unfamiliarity –
ever a stranger in a
foreign milieu,
an ocean away from
home. These days,
holed up in my hometown,
homestead,
habitat, my own planet
and (gross) plane,
I’m also ever slightly
ill-at-ease,
every familiar thing now
drenched
in a foreign light, heard
in a disquieting way,
smelt and tasted seasoned
with dust and ash.
Ill-at-ease in my own
skin, my head and heart.
I’ve listened to You and
told myself
so many times I’ve come
to believe it
beyond any intentional,
intellectual concept,
down to my very bones –
this world is not my
home.
This world is not my
home.
O child of God, don't
rest until you
get back to where you
started.
(photo by Debbie Finch)
The heart of the circle
Born into a realm where a childish heart
is soon crushed as a matter of course,
sewn up and packed back down
to function brokenly in the name of wisdom,
You’ve come again to sever the sewing
for each of us and let it bleed.
To accomplish, if not the restitution of innocence,
the hearkening of each heart back to its beginnings.
Our minds reject such an intrusion,
busying themselves with worldly affairs,
opting for fear over pain,
insularity over vulnerability
while hearts, in ones You have directly touched,
begin a slow, planetary revolution
toward and around You – the center of existence,
the unbroken heart of the circle.
O child of God, the mind gives way to worry
and the heart bears thus much needless woe.
A clockwork arrangement
Silent seem the stars in their vigil,
no one near enough to hear their earnest roaring.
The moon shows its face, a clockwork arrangement
of shadow and light – mute testimony
of our estrangement and God’s abiding faithfulness.
It is He Who has sent Himself on this journey, apparently,
gathering and guiding Himself toward home.
Infinite and solitary by nature and definition,
there’s no room anywhere for anyone else.
No self means no other.
No child but the Father.
O child of God, sometimes
all you can do is hold the pen.
(photo by Petra Fischer)
A silent stillness
Shoot ‘til you run out of arrows, He said.
Then, we can have a heart to heart.
Fill your dance card
but don’t forget who ‘brung ya’.
Stop tugging at your end of the rope.
Your obsessions no longer have any fire.
Your villains have fled by the light of day
or become the shadows of a moonstruck elm.
Turn to Me for your midnight solace or else
mount a fresh horse and ride farther into oblivion.
O child of God, once you let go the rope,
the bell will come to a sheer, silent stillness.
I have no future
You and I walk this path together.
That’s all that matters.
I have no future.
My past has led me to here and is therefore holy.
My books collect dust on the shelves.
That’s my sadhana now.
I read
the pages of my days and nights.
I’ve no idea where I’m going
or how things work.
I leave that to You.
I was made for this – to be Your companion,
to give and receive of Your divinity.
Nothing on heaven or earth ever can
nor ever will threaten our relationship.
O child of God, who can you trust
if you can’t trust your one true Friend?
Papier-mâché
One day you might find the truth
you have consistently failed to live up to
is not the truth at all.
The paradigm allotted to you,
bringer of such recurring misery,
is a mere construct of sticks and stems,
water-based glue and papier-mâché.
One day you might find that the celebrated elite
have led you so far from the mark,
so determinedly trekking in the wrong direction,
that the only heart-fitting course remaining for you
is to stop where you are; to be irrevocably left behind.
O child of God, get lost enough to find that Meher
has long ago taken you by the hand.
Rubble and dust
I misunderstood, years ago, when You
first brought out the chisel and hammer,
imagining You would shape me
into a worthy likeness
and I welcomed the blows as best I might.
Now I see, Your perfect aim
is to reduce me to rubble and dust
(a tedious task for the tall cold stone of me).
Rubble and dust – rubble which has no center
and dust with no grit or blood.
I should have understood it sooner –
the likeness of You is the absence of me.
O child, God is found, said Meher,
where you are not.
Lovers of Meher
You referred to us as lovers, not followers,
perhaps because so few are willing to be led
into such fearsome territory as You inhabit.
Instead, we make our own way,
in our own little world.
Lovers,
You named us, because the abandonment
of our selves requires not a regimen to follow,
fraught with discipline and resolve,
but a way of effortless, irresistible love. Not self-control
but the giving up of self and control entirely.
O child of God, only lovers enter the kingdom gates
and only Meher holds the key.
(drawing by Rich Panico)
