God's gift

God’s gift                                                                                          
 
Enjoy this moment God has made
knowing full well
 
you have no right to joy –
not having earned it,
 
not owning it nor having created it.
It’s a momentary gift you can never possess,
 
slipping invariably through your fingers.
Endure the suffering moments, too, God gives,
 
knowing you do not own suffering
and have not earned it.  Knowing it too shall pass.
 
We pray for joy while the teachings
emphasize the efficacy of suffering.
 
But God gives neither joy nor pain; God’s gift is life –
the undivided experience and awareness of it –
 
the ecstasy and horror, beauty and bitterness,
pride and grief, the gentility and brutality of it all.
 
O child of God, to accept the gift of God,
accept the total, eternal ownership of the Giver. 

Orb of the heart

Orb of the heart                                                                               
 
When the center of the sky was earth,
the movements of planets and stars
 
seemed erratic; calculations difficult and complex.
The sun took over and flights clicked
 
more easily into predictable patterns.
And when the center of the sky
 
became a distant, conjectured,
long-ago point of origin, the earth,
 
stars and planets began to interact
in calculable and precise ways,
 
parts of an infinite, well-oiled machine.
As long as that blue, stone cold
 
orb of the heart is taken to be
the center of the universe,
 
every outward movement,
every body spinning beyond it
 
will be judged as erratic and arbitrary,
inexplicable and incalculable.
 
O child of God, the truth makes things
o-so-much-more simple and clear.

In the thick

In the thick                                                                                         
 
The nearer you get to God,
the more you take Him for granted.
 
God becomes a necessary routine –
soap to skin, food to belly,
 
the hours allotted for sleep.
Daily we remember God –
 
to give Him His due
until one day we are shown
 
He’s due everything, every moment.
Then, life becomes a prayer.
 
You take it for granted God is there
because it’s His life, His due
 
and where else would God be
but deep in the thick of His own Self?
 
O child of God, make Him the center
until He becomes the everything.

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. 

(drawing by Rich Panico)

Barakoti

Barakoti                                                                                             
 
Twelve Coats danced for joy
when he stood before his Beloved
 
yet he would not remove his coats.
Threadbare and ragged, odious with filth,
 
he had not the faith to part with
that which routinely embraced him,
 
sheltered and insulated him from the world.
Baba’s Presence enlivened the old man
 
but not enough to let him slip out from under
a lifetime of accumulated concealment and buffer, 
 
shed his superstitions (with their dubious protection)
and grant him the courage to dance naked before his Lord.
 
O child of God, you know almost nothing about Barakoti;
maybe just enough to use him innocuously as a metaphor.

Blue ribbons

Blue ribbons                                                                                      
 
To lose one’s life (You say) is to die by inches.
And here I am having sprung another leak,
 
soaking red the bed sheet torn into strips,
lured again by the barker’s pitch
 
and the bawdy wink, swept away
by the ignorant tides, the grinder’s wheel
 
and the smell of sweat.  She’ll guess
my weight and age, the painted lady offers. 
 
Why, I’m a featherweight
and as old as the stars.
 
Circling the tawdry midway, fooled again
by the bright lights, the weighted targets,
 
the crooked scales; by the rhinestones,
the smoke, the make-up and mirrors.
 
The admission is free into this carnie world
erected in the middle of a cow pasture
 
where two state highways cross
and disappear in opposite directions.
 
But, you have to pay to get out
and I can’t come up with the fee
 
having gambled away all my money
on teddy bears and goldfish and shiny blue ribbons.
 
O child of God, to lose one’s life is to die by inches
on the immeasurable path back to your original abode.

If life is a prayer

If life is a prayer                                                                                       
 
You stood up for us – even towards the end
when You couldn’t walk without help.
 
Insisted on Eruch reading the prayers
and You arose to participate,
 
mandali on either side for support,
gesturing for Eruch to go ever faster
 
because of the strain.  You are
named Ezad the only one worthy of worship.
 
If life is a prayer I am nearing my amen.
Early on, as I was making it up, seemingly
 
without support from You, it never amounted
to more than a periodic, desperate plea. 
 
But over the years, You’ve shown me how to pray,
(not done with me yet), incrementally
 
changing the heart of my prayers from I to You,
a metaphor for You becoming more and more
 
the heart of whoever it is offering my prayer
to Whoever it is Who receives it.
 
O child of God, the perfect prayer is a silent,
continuous obeisance from the very core.

The unfolding answer

The unfolding answer                                                                            
 
A man of deep faith, just as a man
without faith, asks nothing of God.
 
Life itself to such a man 
is the unfolding answer to all prayers.
 
Pain, fright is there – but not anxiety;
loss but not grief;
 
failure without disappointment;
solitude without loneliness;
 
death (we are told) without termination.
Perched on the tip of the bow,
 
a man of faith is serenely poised
to receive, to pass along
 
only what he’s given; responsible
for nothing but vigilance and acquiescence.
 
He gets the big picture, the ocean view,
recognizes the nuances, though as yet,
 
is unable to grasp the details.
Less than a hair’s breadth (the Masters say),
 
separates heaven from earth –
it requires an unhanding,
 
an atrophy of judgment,
a relinquishment of presumption.
 
O child of God, life itself to a man of faith
is the unfolding answer to all prayers.

(stitching by Caleb Darnell)

The nature of stars

The nature of stars                                                                                     
 
A sky full of stars and the magi looking
eastward to an extraordinary flare
 
moving contrary to fixed patterns,
to all known predictions,
 
contrary to the nature of stars.
They follow it pell-mell –
 
blazing sun, freezing nights –
in a burdensome gallop,
 
destination unknown.  It doesn’t matter –
they are chasing the cosmic,
 
leaving behind the earth.
And the great mysteries of heaven
 
come down to greet them, those wise men,
to intermingle and lay on hands,
 
no longer ashen remnants,
distant trackers and observers
 
but burning, existential participants
in the ancient, great fires of creation.
 
O child of God, chase after truth;
let nothing stand in your way.  

(photo by Petra Fischer)