The real mystery

The real mystery

You went on a trip around the world and arrived back

having never crossed your front porch.

Viewed your whole journey

through your living room windows;

between the same faded curtains;

behind the same smudged glass.

You arrived back at the beginning, immaculately self-preserved;

while your true adventure remains unexplored.

O child of God, pace the worn-out carpet of your own abode.

That's where the real mystery lies. 

God was born

God was born                                                                                

God was born (as any lover will attest)
at David Sassoon Hospital in Pune, India
 
more than a century ago now.  That is to say,
God entered the mortal realm an embryo in a womb –
 
vulnerable, dependent, miniscule and yet, growing
inexorably toward fruition.  Nothing can hold back God;
 
His precisely scheduled manifestation. 
Even Jesus (of the ascension and the miraculous birth)
 
began a floating fish in a woman’s belly. 
O seeker of God, God is within you,
 
right now -- (it’s how He enters the realm). 
Within you –vulnerable, dependent, miniscule, yes,
 
but growing every moment, inexorably toward fruition.
And, in the course of His love and law,
 
He shall outgrow the flesh that encapsulates Him,
transcend the mind that ensnares and escape
 
forever the narrow, bedimmed, illusory confines
of your self.   O seeker, nothing can hold back
 
the God within you nor prevent His destined,
precisely scheduled manifestation.
 
O child of God, where is your patience?  Everyone –
Meher Baba says –is destined for the supreme goal.

That nonexistent shore

That nonexistent shore                                                                              

My little soul is not a mere drop in the bucket

but according to Meher a drop in an ocean

without a shore, without sky above nor floor below.

An ocean if there is only ocean.

And my soul is not on a journey –

no space to move through,

nowhere to go and no time to get there.

I have no fellow beings, no boundaries,

no autonomy, no existence.

And yet here I am – every day just as if

there were days and nights, lives and deaths,

flesh and bone, five senses, mind and knowledge.

Here I am, o Lord, calling to You

as if You had ears and I had a throat and tongue.

O child of God, let your mind twist and swirl

until it’s dashed upon the stones of that nonexistent shore.

Famous blue overcoat

Famous blue overcoat                                                                                      

O if I could shed my cleverness like an old coat!

Leave it in the seat of a city bus, say,

groaning on without me

or stuff it in a local thrift store bin.

Where it started out as occasional apparel

donned for style, secrecy, protection,

over time it became an essential part of me,

holding everything together.

It became how I daily get through life.

And now that I want to come clean;

strip down to simple naked faith,

now that I yearn to fall apart,

stubbornly, heavily it clings

(and I to it) concealing the real me

as I wrestle and suffocate

under its weight and cover.

O child of God, Meher is leading you by the hand.

Take solace in the truth of your plight.

This dewy morning

This dewy morning                                                                                

A green trail left in the morning dew 

where I have walked to the newly turned garden.

No point in asking where the dew

will be later on in the day

nor where it was the crisp cold evening last.

That’s all being taken care of by someone else.

I bend to work the hoe in dew-drenched hands,

till the dewy soil, strike with the blade

the occasional dew-like, hidden pebbles.

I anticipate a succulent harvest a few months hence,

fitting myself as best I might into this small patch

of the universal scheme, accepting whatever the price

and stipulations of its brief sustenance and bounty.

Everything else is being taken care of by someone else.

O child of God, surrender is a quiet thing,

begun every sunrise in humble, laboring silence.

Unencumbered of woe

Unencumbered of woe                                                                                   

Holding Meher Baba’s umbrella,

my long legs, tall frame keep pace

as He strides the rough terrain 

of early Meherabad. 

We halt in the middle of a field

and after a long silence He turns,

gestures for me to step nearer,

out of the harsh sun into the circle of shade.

I obey and leave beyond its rim myself,

my quest and all such fearsome bindings;

leave behind the rest of the world. 

No need for anything else

save His Presence, this shelter

beyond attainment, beyond understanding.

O child of God, to trust Meher

is to become unencumbered of woe.

The perfect me

The perfect me                                                                                  
 
Forgive me, humanity, I have not been
the human being – the father, son, brother,
 
husband, partner, friend – I had hoped to be.
Nowhere near, not within a country mile.
 
What I am and have been –
to complete perfection – is the perfect me.
 
No one could ever come close
to being as perfect a me as me.
 
Soon enough I’ll meet the perfect death,
this version of self ceasing forever to exist
 
and move on to what is next.
I will dutifully ask forgiveness from God
 
and then thank Him for sharing with me
the opportunity to serve, 
 
(fitting so aptly into His plan)
by expressing precisely all He wished
 
to be expressed, attaining all that
was required by my particular incarnation.
 
O child of God, don’t worry.  Be happy.
Perfection is in the eye of the Beholder.