A grass hut

A grass hut                                                                                                       

God has no boundaries.

Make Him the hub (said my Lord)

and He will someday also

become the periphery. 

Walk with Him this immediate realm,

at some point you’ll enter the other –

you’ll lose your own boundaries.

God tolerates (apparently) for the sake of illusion,

our claims of authority, the iron pins

by which we stake out our properties.

Only on rare occasions does He trespass –

a revelation, a vision, an inexplicable synchronicity.

But God has no boundaries.  That is the sobering truth,

the great fear to which we all must attend –

utter vulnerability and ultimate non-existence.

Like an elephant entering a grass hut

(if He has a mind to) – no locks, barricades; no walls,

no appeals to our sovereignty will keep or contain Him

as He invades and supplants,

obliterates the structures of our beings.

O child of God, Meher did often avow –

we are not we but One.

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.  

The heart of wisdom

The heart of wisdom                                                                                

A popular version I browsed in the bookstore

of the Tao Te Ching, urging everyone and telling how

in tranquil, flowing poetry to become sages.

Don’t know if I could or would want to become a sage.

Better to be wise than foolish but, sage or fool, both

essentially ignorant – like learning to favor a bruised foot

or determining the easiest route through traffic home.

The heart of wisdom is to discover ourselves,

the fallacies of our basic assumptions,

carve a niche from which we might calmly

view the world, not for the sake of comfort,

not for any advantage; not to seek a dependence

upon wisdom in lieu of grace and surrender.

The Old Man put down the Nameless pen to paper

best he could.  Reading his now gilded words

standing in the self-help aisle of Barnes & Noble.

O child of God, foolish to judge what belongs

where, why and to whom concerning the Way.