Join the tended sparrows
Everything is in God’s
hands.
So says my faith and what
a relief
to feel powerless and
ineffectual –
personal culpability
abdicated to karma’s iron law;
proceeding afresh without
the capacity
to botch entirely my soul’s
journey
or hurt any other except
as just another
heedless agent of God’s
inexorable will.
So let me stop now
wrestling with my bindings,
join the tended sparrows
in song-praise
among the God-noted
leaves, above
the numbered grains and
mustard seeds,
even to the corrupting
moths and rust
let me celebrate these
swaddling clothes;
tightly secured as I am
until fully accountable/
acceptable to God and my
destined ultimate liberty.
O child of God, whatever
occurs is perfect
and whatever does not
occur never could have been.
Of resolution and
resurrection
Beauty becomes a quiet
comfort
in the latter years,
giving of its depth
and essence without
intentions or purpose,
earning our honor and
attention
by virtue of its mere
existence.
One day Truth will be
like that.
We’ll cling to it even
through
the most bitter of
circumstances,
the most fearsome grief
because it lies
so purely, so resolutely
beyond our grasp.
It will taste medicinal
by then –
of resolution and
resurrection.
One day Truth will come
to our door
so pure, so vulnerable,
so lovely
it will be beyond us
to ever deny it anything.
O child of God, pray for
the day truth, love and beauty
all are expressed by the
same silent word.
Elegy
Not a word of scripture
to be quoted
over these bones but, at
graveside,
he would have tolerated a
short, silent prayer.
He took it as it came;
for what it was worth.
Good for the sake of
righteousness.
Honest in the cause of
truth.
Brave for honor’s sake.
Kind by decree of the
human heart.
He’d put aside any
fanciful notions
of heavenly reward or his
possible rebirth –
(he was convinced of his
own annihilation)
and thus, resolutely, he
went to his death.
Quietly cherishing joy,
enduring the pain,
he came closer to
surrender
than any religious man I
know. If he lacked anything,
it was the imagination
and longing to be anything
other than the man he
was.
As they lower his body
now into the grave
I am struck by how
closely
a coffin resembles a
crib.
O child of God, to surrender
is to yield,
earnestly and humbly, to
your destiny.
Chanji
He found you in Chowpatty
washed up on the beach
by life’s betrayals,
cruel vicissitudes.
You were ready to drown
by then,
hopeless, not caring if
you lived or died.
He persuaded you
to go a-travelin’ with
Him.
Apparently, the Way is so
narrow
there’s only room for one
to walk it at a time
which doesn’t mean
we go it alone
but that we must stay
hard on the heels
of our traveling
companion.
Chanji, by the end of his
days,
was one with You, ready
for drowning,
hopeless, not caring if
he lived or died
as long as it pleased his
Master.
O child of God, nothing
ever changes . . . it just gets larger –
more height, breadth and
depth than we could ever imagine.
Waiting in the wings
The moon is a disc, not a
sphere.
Flat as the earth; the
sea
pasted onto the bottom of
the sky;
stars poking through a
threadbare canvas.
I’ve turned away from the
latest backdrop,
heading toward the
interior.
It’s all to be pulled
down anyway
at the performance’s end.
We flow through time
apparently
but, also, time flows
through us,
life delivered daily to
our door.
How could I ever cease to
exist?
If I cease, existence
ceases, the void
once more reigns and even
then
I’ll be waiting in the
wings.
The scenery incessantly
changes but still
I stride the stage,
emoting, aggrandizing,
gesticulating, playing it
to the hilt.
O child of God, follow
the script.
The pageant is endless;
without resolution.
(drawing by Rich Panico)
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.
(Drawing by Rich Panico)
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.
