Twigs
and mud
They
gave me a name at birth
and
I’ve answered to it ever since.
Sometimes
when called upon I wonder –
who
is that masked man anyway?
Maybe
I’m one of God’s sparrows
settled
into a nest of twigs and mud.
The
truth is I’ve never learned
who
I am; only my habits.
As
I meticulously strive to make certain
I
am never a surprise to myself.
At
my birth they wrote down who I am.
I’ve
lived a long life under that name
and
yet, still, a mystery I remain,
unto
myself and every other.
O
child of God, direct your gaze inward
and confront the riddle
of who you are.
The
miracle realm
At
the keyboard again and who’s peering
over
my shoulder, revising my text as I write?
To
believe in the Muse of poetry
opens
the door to other spirits –
archangels,
cherubs, seraphs . . . and God.
Daily
we truck in goods of the apparent,
rarely
touching upon the Mystery.
Yet,
we are offered but one illusory choice –
to
cling to our known world
or
to enter by faith the miracle realm
of
holy men, masts, Masters and Avatars.
No
one, my Lord advises,
steps
into that Holiness
with
one foot yet planted in the profane.
O
child of God, you have no choice – so foreign
is this transient world
to your eternal soul.
After
the Flood
I
was there when the world ended,
ancient
landmarks washed away;
the
rains letting up and my Lord appeared –
first
as Polaris guiding me upon the flood,
then
as Noah at the wheel, sharing the journey.
I’m
on night duty these days,
insubstantial
as a moon shadow,
just
present enough to tend to my chores
while
Noah guides the ship
upon
the boundless main,
beneath
the moonglow
and
the North Star,
awaiting
a new adventure
once
the waters recede.
O
child of God, for the New Life to begin,
the old life must be swept
away.
Nearer
my God to Thee
In
the Pentecostal pews of my childhood, we sang,
(as
they did when the Titanic went down)
nearer,
nearer, my God, to Thee.
Years
later, I was told by Meher
that
God is nearer than my breath,
thus
unsettling my resolve to inch ever closer –
God
being always at hand,
yet
beyond my ability
to
know and feel His presence.
Having
wondered for a lifetime if God exists,
my
Lord suggested that I should instead question
whether
or not I exist. And the answer to
that
might
relieve me of every burden
accumulated
over a lifetime of search.
O
child, get nearer to God (per Meher), by moving
further and further
from I, me and mine.
Rock
of ages
I
am being swept downstream,
wherever
the river takes me.
Ever
since I can remember,
perpetual
change and shift,
illusive
options, good and bad adventures.
Then,
in midstream I grabbed hold
and
climbed aboard a jutting rock.
And
I was overcome by the sudden stillness
after
a lifetime of flux and flow.
And
the clarity – from a view point
that
does not shift with the current.
Stillness
upon a rock in the mid-river’s roar,
without
past or future,
anticipation
or memory,
without
guilt or fear, only the quiet
solidity
beneath my feet.
O
child of God, as Bodhidharma proposed –
settle down where
there is no settling down.
A
prompting of the heart
I
come to the end of the highway
and
strike out across the rough terrain;
no
welcoming arms out this far,
nor
friendly company
and
no turning back. This is my path
and
always has been –
solitude
being a lifelong companion.
Only
the periphery changes.
No
hard proof of anything yet –
just
a few scattered clues
and
a prompting of the heart.
A
settling in to the notion
that
nothing much matters.
It’s
either grace or nothing.
Coming
to the truth of either
is
my only succor –
to
find out or die trying. Alone as always
except,
perhaps, for my Beloved.
I
can let go now His promises
since
there is no turning back,
no
turning aside from whatever
the
Truth might be.
O
child of God, examine yourself in a last attempt
to embrace your one
true Friend.
Heart
condition
Remember
Me, said my Lord,
and
forget all else.
Not,
perhaps, by thinking of Him,
nor
repetition of His name.
Remember
Him with that
which
is referred to as the heart –
a
warmth in the chest you might feel
if
you were in His physical presence;
a
soul memory from the Original Oneness.
You
are drawn to Him now from so far away,
so
foreign a shore, because
of
your recognition of Him
as
your one true Self.
O
devotee, honor this recognition;
let
it consume you.
Smolder
in its flame.
O
child of God, you have a delicate heart condition;
apply liberally the balm
of remembrance.
This
is God
Consciousness
brings to mind daily
innumerable
questions but gives only one reply –
whimsically
called God. At every turning,
again
and again, innumerable questions
and
the answer is always God –
a
short, neatly-wrapped, throw-away answer,
a
meaningless answer, no answer at all,
merely
the question itself reiterated and rephrased.
God
asked Himself once (per Meher)
(and
is still asking) the Self-same question,
Who
am I?
and consciousness arose
(and
still yet arises)
with
one silent, ineffable, at least partial
answer
– This. This. This is God.
O
child, so many questions you ask,
as if your mind could
ever contain the Truth.
Perfectly
apt
Everything
is perfectly apt, apparently.
Unparalleled
and perfectly apt.
Everything,
everything.
We
may disapprove, protest,
denounce
and abhor aspects of it
from
our precarious perches
on
the sleek, sheer surface of time and space,
but
everything is God (Meher assures us)
and
in His Singularity
and
from His solitary, all-knowing perspective,
everything
is suitable and fitting
and
perfectly apropos.
O
child, would you dare take on the weight
of altering even the
least bit of God’s handiwork?
The
same fire
Become
a dust mote, the Mystics suggest,
or
a flake of ash stirred up
in
the wake of the Beloved’s stride,
just
as the universe is ashes and dust
stirred
up in God’s wake
as
He moves through the Void.
God
is both inside and outside
this
briefly-lighted cinder known as me,
parted
by a thin partition of illusion,
continuously
attempting from both sides
to
reunite and shatter beyond resurrection
the
charlatan between.
O
child of God, you and the stars,
declare the Mystics,
are made of the same fire.
The
real work
For
a number of years, I have been engaged
in
the solving of a large jigsaw puzzle.
When
completed it will contain
no
enduring image, merely
an
empty surface of pure reflection.
My
captivation with this puzzle’s
construction
and solution
lies
not in its ultimate completion
but
in the certitude
that
this is a holy assignment
granted
after a lifetime
of
aimless cross-purposes –
an
ordained inducement to explore
(in
full faith) the underlying truth
and
the hidden-in-plain-sight revelations
of
this puzzle’s mirroring, enigmatic surface.
O
child of God, the real work begins when you
see the futility of
every other move.
God,
God, God, God
Words
of elucidation on one level
tend
to obfuscate meanings on another.
To
say, I love You, God, for example,
might
be translated in a deeper realm
(word
for word) as, God, God, God, God.
O
pilgrim! One day (we are promised),
We
shall ardently, truthfully say,
I
love You, God,
and
know then the truth full well –
that
there is no I and no You.
And
Love is God.
And
God is Love.
O
child, make your every verse
a
psalm to the ancient, holy One.
My
deepest mystery
Don’t
try to understand Me, said my Lord.
Just
as well! After all these years
You
still endure as my deepest mystery
and
thus remain the very source of my faith.
I’ve
never been able to explain You away!
Self-declared
Highest of the High
with
Your love-indentured mandali
and
a worldwide following
bent
upon Your every word and what did You offer?
Forty-four
years of Silence, numerous broken promises,
unkept
appointments and discarded plans.
A
lifetime of teachings (which You insisted
You
hadn’t come for), discourses, formal prayers,
and
the offer of a nothing that might prove
to
be everything. And what did You
in
Your Mastery take upon Yourself?
Servitude,
reclusion, itineracy and pain,
leaving
me to ponder what was Your motive
and
where was Your reward? Whisper
the
answers to me, Lord, at Your leisure
when
my restive mind no longer probes
the
odd, esoteric details of Your Majesty.
O
child of God, seek not explanations
but a wordless
quenching of your every query.
Truth’s
vast remainder
I
share this poem with whomever,
but
be advised – the Truth is too large
to
fit into a poem; to fit inside a human skull,
to
fit within the boundaries of Existence.
Truth
has no opposite, it being spacious
enough
to also house the false
and
this poem, like every other,
is
a watered-down semblance of the Truth,
weak
enough for human consumption.
Whatever teardrop of Reality
a
poem might capture, it must of necessity
exclude
Truth’s vast remainder.
O
child of God, the best any poem might offer
is a novel approach to
Truth’s multifaceted surface.
The
Onlyness of You
I’ve
decided to consciously (and conscientiously)
stop
making decisions, crediting every move instead
to
the Decision Maker. I’ve chosen to stop
choosing,
turning
all that purported hocus pocus
over
to the Reality of my Sole Provider.
In
the meantime, God is kept busy
with
an intricate task – not of liberating me,
but
of revealing the fallacy of all such concepts
and
the error in our cumbrous language
of
such notions as I, me, my and mine,
which
should Realistically be stated
as
We, Us, Ours and Yours
until
We, Us, Ours and Yours become
the
Realization of the Onliness of You.
O
child of God, the wordsmith is having difficulties
with the tools of his
trade.
A
ceaseless interrogation
How
could I ever hope to know the truth of God
when
I don’t know the truth of myself?
My
autobiography is an authentic account
of
a hapless poseur and a pretender.
From
where do these thoughts of mine arise?
Who
peers out from these eyes?
Years
of study and I have learned nothing.
Years
of search and I am unable to locate myself.
I
have naught to show but a lifetime of questions.
All
I’m sure of is that the identity assigned to me
is
not who I am. So who is asking the
questions
and
who is seeking the answers?
O
child of God, your life, or what’s left of it,
has become a
ceaseless interrogation.
Lifetime
costume
I
am foreign to myself; it’s not me –
the
name under which I am registered.
Myself
and I have never been introduced,
as
far as I can remember.
I
stepped onto the wheel
and
it started spinning.
An
old man awakens each morning
and
puts on his lifetime costume.
Quite
a load to carry, heavier each day.
But
I am not the one to bear that weight.
What
am I doing for the rest of my life?
I
never had one. I remember some sort of
dream.
With
no past, how can I have a future?
How
could I have ever existed
if
I will one day cease to exist? Who is it
that
accepts this illusion as Real?
O
child of God, who speaks this way –
inside your head in
the only language you know?
The
Lantern
When
the wick is lowered
and
the flame blown out,
its
glow reappears in the stars above
which
have always been there
but
were eclipsed by the lantern’s glow.
When
the young lad ceased to be Merwan
He
became the Everything
which
is always everywhere
but
is hidden by individuality.
When
He returned as the Chosen One
He
bore the Everything within Himself.
And
when His individuality was again dropped
He
returned to the Everything
and
the Everything returned to Him.
O
child of God, what we have here
is an attempted
description of the Indescribable.
A
passing fancy
Make
yourself scarce,
advised
the Mystics and Masters
before
each moved on,
bequeathing
to the world
their
enigmatic testimonies
and
their inviolable inspiration.
O
to become nothing and no one!
But
its left up to me to accomplish the task;
left
up to me and my karma, of course;
that
is to say, me and my Maker,
me
and the whole Grand Scheme –
to
abandon the past, eschew the future
and
dwell pristinely in between,
becoming
the one who in truth
I
have always been – a momentary figure,
a
flickering image upon the screen
without
substance or Reality and thus
to
free myself from the character in the play
while
remaining an anonymous extra
milling
about in the crowd.
O
child of God, you will be nearer to the goal
when you fulfill your
role as a passing fancy.
Stand
in the same silence
I
am a crooked man who lives in a crooked house
built
upon the shifting sands of this old tidewater town.
When
my neighbors gather, ask me to explain myself,
I’m
at a loss – there’s not a single motive left
to
pull from my bag of tricks; no excuses,
except
maybe, God made me do it.
But
many of them don’t believe in God
and
the ones who do, don’t believe in God the way I do.
They
picture Him somewhere
on
the other side of the galaxy
rather
than moving amongst them
on
my unkempt lawn.
I
no longer offer explanations –
none
of them speak my language.
And
when they leave me to myself, only I believe
that
it is God who lifts my hand to wave goodbye.
O
child of God, stand in the same silence
Your Saviour employed
to awaken the world.
