My candled paper
lantern
My faith is a chochin
lantern
shaped from bamboo and
paper
with past impromptu
fortifications
of old shoelaces, paper
clips,
rubber bands and Scotch
tape.
It’s an easy target
for the glib and
resourceful.
I rarely bring it out in
public
to withstand the
buffeting winds
and random crushing
blows.
Not that my faith has
ever been
doused or shattered by
mere words.
It shines for me in such
an incommunicable way –
my candled paper lantern
with its bright, fragile
covering.
It shines for me dangling
afore,
offering steady, silent
comfort and guidance
through this great
harrowing darkness of a world.
O child of God, keep your
little lantern lit
until you become a six
foot blaze yourself.
You never let go
After I wised up, I told
my adult self
I knew not what I was
doing –
nine years old tramping
down the aisle
to give my life to
Jesus. But lately I see
I knew exactly what I was
doing,
my untouched heart
roughly awakened
and refusing then to
settle for anything less.
Very soon I wised up,
took back my life
and went my worldly way.
It was when I began
to reawaken and search
for You
that I knew not what I
was doing
yet reduced by the
painful invalidity of the world
to having nothing else
worth doing.
And learning later that
once You accept
a lamb into the fold You
never let go.
It was You who initiated
my adult search
for the one Who is within
me all along
and for that child, lost
but not abandoned,
being now mercifully
relieved
of all his worldly wisdom.
O child of God, you have
not changed a whit
since that surrender and
neither has your Lord.
Fig leaf
One of the most fortunate (for us)
attributes of God the Omniscient
is He’s never disappointed.
We can’t let God down.
He didn’t build a garden that somehow
through human error went hopelessly awry.
Shame before God is a dishonesty,
a lack of humility, hiding behind a fig leaf,
seeing ourselves as more culpable
than we could ever possibly be.
Humility is the way back to the garden,
recognizing God’s sovereignty,
offering God our worst and best.
Humility is the opposite of shame –
it unravels our pretensions –
presenting ourselves to God (and to everyone)
nakedly honest, precisely who we are
not who we wish we were nor hope to become.
O child of God, how haughty you are
to speak so freely of God or humility.
Eternal sweetness
On its outward flight,
the honeybee
zigzags its dogged way
amidst the garden
scents and colors,
collecting in its honey pouch
here and there the
makings of sweetness.
But on returning home to
the hive
there is no waywardness,
no lingering in its labor.
Laden, ponderously caked,
full of pollen it makes a
beeline
for the dripping
honeycomb
and the Queen’s golden
haven.
Would that I be, Lord, on
my way home,
forsaking the world’s
bright wavering garden,
having foraged all I need
of it to enter in
and turn the inner realms
into eternal sweetness.
O child of God, how
fanciful you are
in depicting your
inevitable return to Reality.
This time around
Friends of mine tour
Europe.
Some attend the Super
Bowl.
Others go to Yosemite or
the Big Apple,
Africa, China, the Middle
East;
rock concerts, skydiving,
sailing the high seas.
Fine and wondrous
adventures
I will miss out on this
time around.
These things are not what
I care for.
These things are not what
I lack.
This time, when I kick
the bucket
I want it to ring hollow,
resounding in the chill
air
throughout the somber
countryside,
tolling for my Lord and
for myself,
for this brief stretch of
our adventure as companions
this time around on my
arduous trek back to Union.
O child of God, everyone
is on their way home
by as many routes as
there are wayward souls.
Faith in love
Words fail, but one word
refuses to go away –
love – which Meher Baba
uses to cover all bases
and lists under one
category the inexplicable.
Love which we know well
enough
to desire its taste but
not well enough
to drown in, its depths
to reveal.
So we are left with faith
instead, through it
to learn a new blind,
deaf, dumb way to live,
nearer to love, nearer to
truth, rooted in the ancient way,
trusting everything we
are to His will and whim.
O child of God, faith in
Meher Baba
is faith in love.
God instead
I don’t know the
particulars
but I’m going to have to
leave
this world one day, the
only one
I ever remember knowing;
leave behind everyone
and everything I hold
dear
because the sea is (after
all) cardboard
and the moon is made of
paper.
I’m not talking about
death’s overtaking
but as a clear-eyed,
deep-breath resolution.
Because if I and Love are
eternally One,
my affections and their
objects (like myself)
are but pale,
irresolvable reflections.
And to reach beyond the
facade I must one day
unhand voluntarily their
brief, illusory
solace and choose God
instead.
O child of God, repeating
the mystic promises,
you hover constantly near
the edge of the abyss.
His One perfect response
Any question asked of God
is an implicit demand for
an answer.
After a lifetime (to my
dismay)
of such implications, I
am beginning now
to hear (by His grace)
the one answer
which has always been
there – His silence
(wherein only real things
are exchanged
and wherein God alone is
real).
I took a silent,
invisible God
to be distant,
unapproachable
while He’s been
faithfully
answering me all along
in a Voice – because it
is so unlike mine –
I’ve had not the ears to
hear.
Now I might grasp a bit
more His admonition –
Love doesn’t ask . . .
because Oneness hasn’t a tongue.
O child of God, Love is
silent, benevolent,
His One and only perfect
response.
The bosom of Abraham
It’s not about solving
the mystery anymore;
locking in the puzzle
pieces.
It seems now to be about
forbearance
(in lieu of utter
acceptance). About giving up.
An attempt to care no longer
for my self
for the sake of all the
other selves I do care for,
knowing all the while I
make my way just as they do –
alone . . . alone except
for our mutual Friend.
Towards the end of a life
of compulsions,
the one option that seems
open to me
is to disregard the
interior prods and pulls
and the exterior
promptings that trigger them
and to nestle myself,
such as I am,
into the bosom of my
particular Abraham.
O child of God, the
Friend who is guiding you
is the Friend who is
calling you home.
