Sunlit roses

Sunlit roses

Birds singing at daybreak, the taste of God in their beaks.

Shimmering light settles on the ever-flowing stream.

I walk these narrow streets as Your companion.

Hand in hand, this burdened city turns holy.

There’s a longing for You in the corners of my heart.

Nothing washes it out.  No amount of tears.

The Brahmin seeking purity missed my Beloved,

last seen in the marketplace handing out prasad.

O Lord, grant me the poverty of the moment –

poised to follow anywhere, the whim of my Beloved.

Forget notions of love, struggle and triumph.

Nothing’s worth remembering but God.

O child of God, look for the Radiant One among sunlit roses.

The flight of His pink coat along the garden path.

                                     (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)

The auspices of Meher

The auspices of Meher                                                                                

To live my best in this dream life,

I am told by faith (until I awaken)

to trade it in for a different sort of dream,

shrugging off the old, taking up the new

under the aegis of the Perfect Seeker,

unheralded and itinerant

through the heart of the world but not of it.  

Guard my tongue, ignore my compulsions;

forsake perceptions; my opinions of no more

consequence than the peeping of a bird.  

Drift through the New Life with a Companion divine,

the one true Friend, nurturing that relationship

and fellowship until I awaken my Self

at dream’s end to the promised eternal Reality of God.

O child, abandon yourself to the auspices of Meher,

the One and only Truth there is.

God's endless existence

God’s endless existence                                                                                

Done 100%, He said;

all that urgent business

fitted into one lifetime.

While on the eternal side of the veil

tranquility ever reigns.

The Avatar has His mission

over the cycles of time, while God

has no unfinished business whatsoever.

Perfect equanimity knows no urgency.

No need for us to grow fearful or impatient

with God’s endless existence

and Baba’s completed work all plotted out,

unfolding inviolate and precise,  

each soul having already arrived on schedule

at the same timeless moment

in the realm of the perfect and eternal.

O child of God, illusion makes possible God’s game.

Don’t get caught up in its imperatives.

An uncut stone

An uncut stone

You propped up Your feet

and made Yourself at home in my body.

You lit a fire in my chest to warm Yourself by.

Under that silent, persistent flame, my heart is melting.

My life can be divided into two parts:  when You are

with me and waiting for when You are with me.

O Lord, the silence between us has grown deeper –

and more delicious!

The silence of a jewel cutter poised above an uncut stone.

I have vague memories of the time before

this madness struck – a man drenched in sorrow,

the constricted voice in his ear of constant dread.

My Beloved, Your dulcet silence is drowning out my fear.

O child of God, look beyond the chisel and hammer

to the exquisite gems the Beloved has gathered in His purse.

                                          (from The Garden of Surrender, 2004)