Jiminy Cricket

Jiminy Cricket                                                                        

Did you know Jiminy Cricket
is a euphemism for Jesus Christ?
  

We tend to make God and the Godman

convenient for ourselves – inconsequential,

lest faith becomes too burdensome,
getting in the way of our will and desire.

(Unless, of course, we hit a rough patch

and require His comfort and fortitude).

We make Him small enough to fit in our pocket,

ride upon our shoulders; imagine Him loyal, 

wise, the truth He utters (in a comical chirping voice)

a mere suggestion to take or leave

as through the titillating world we wend and weave,

nodding our sculpted wooden heads,

bearing our cumbersome, accumulated lies,
hoping to someday become real, untainted, true and alive!

And to one day find that diffident fellow
who we once were before we lost our way.

O child of God, every memorable story is one

of the soul’s search for the Father.

The path

The path                                                                       

The path offers no choice;

can’t be altered nor left behind –

more ourselves than our pulsing hearts,

the spines down our backs

or the mind’s endless torrents

of justifications and desires. 

We can’t ease warily down it

nor chart our way around it;

can’t rest mid-journey.

No wrong turns or blind alleys,

we’re pushed along pell-mell,

compelled and constrained,

never a wasted moment

the whole unimaginably protracted stretch.

No straying from our destinies, pilgrims,

or ourselves, the divine Companion,

the ever-presence of our Maker

in the only game there is.

O child of God, you cite the particulars

yet everything is One.

The sum of my parts

The sum of my parts                                                                         

I am not a white man

Alabama blue collar (retired)

father grandfather brother son.

I am You.  I am You.

I am not a Vedantist Christian Sufi

Buddhist lover of Meher Baba.

Not a novelist poet seeker songwriter.

I am You.  I am You.

Not a sinner beseecher intellectual eremite

introvert; not social political communal. 

Not myself nor the sum of my parts.

I am You.  I am You.

I have yet to realize the truth of Who I am

but my faith is in Your presence and Word –

We are not we but one.  I am not the living lie. 

I am the truth.  I am You.  I am You.

So now my prayer and daily duty is to ever

turn away, turn away from that which I am not

toward the truth of my Self, the truth of Us.

I am You.  I am You.

O child of God, in duality you have choice.

In Reality there is only the infinite One.

A tongueless bell

A tongueless bell                                                                                  

From these poems one might guess

I’m getting a bit desperate

but my Beloved skirts and shields me

from desperation while allowing

(apparently) my compulsions to momentously

flower and die; desires to wither by His grace

into a vapid, gray, tin ear sort of indetermination,

empty to me now as a tongueless bell. 

My interest no longer vested, turning

my holdings over to loved ones

to make their way through the maze

each according to their own karma.

Just bank-sitting now, paralyzed by indifference

except toward the One who quickens my pulse,

sharpens my ears, whets my thirst.  The one

in all the world who rings true.  Rings true.

O child of God, the path of renunciation, through His grace,

has been rendered smoother than you could ever have imagined.