Bread and wine
O Beloved, speak to me
now.
Your words have become my
bread.
Pour the wine.
I am Your son and I
thirst.
The river is flowing,
inside and out, and I am bewildered.
Soothe me with Your
fingertips and fragrant rose-balm.
My restless heart wounds
itself on the ribs of its cage.
Offer the silence and
stillness of quenched desire.
I asked for words and
received Your haunting melody
and a wine-soaked poem
that won’t translate
into any language.
Your voice sounds in the
dark confines of the human heart.
Wine spills from its
trembling vessel and drowns my thirst.
O child of God, rejoice
in the wordless poetry of your Beloved;
the bread and wine that
draws you each moment ever closer to Him.
Life’s accumulations
O Beloved, the
intellectuals among us
probe Your every word,
seeking hidden compartments.
I wish them well.
For many years I tried
soaking up the Ocean through
the sponge of my brain.
Now I’m afraid Your wine
has seriously impaired
my cerebral abilities.
Spouting ingenious
theories of God and man,
Your wave rolled in and
left me gasping for air.
What’s a few consonants
strung with vowels,
when the Ocean floods the
lowlands and carries Your life’s
accumulations out to sea?
Where is sure footing in
fathomless water?
Which directions matter
when all I see is Ocean?
What is there to do now
but float face up and wonder
what You have in mind for
the rest of my life?
O child of God, words of
the Avatar are like bread to his lovers
but it’s the Master’s
wine that soaks you head to foot.
The good thief
On Judgment Day, who will
your theories
and opinions impress?
O child of God, will you
stand before the throne
as a devout believer or
as a man of faith?
Beliefs are straw a
desperate man stuffs into a suit of rags,
hoping to keep at bay his
dark, circling fears.
A man of faith is
empty. His strength comes from another
source.
His coat flutters loosely
from the crossbeam.
The soldiers gambled for
Jesus’ robe
while the real treasure
hung nearby, naked and vulnerable.
From another cross, the
unrepentant thief railed against heaven
with a bitter tongue.
His logical assertions
condemned him to hell.
But, at the last possible
moment, the good thief stole paradise.
He called out to his
Beloved from a point of utter helplessness.
O child of God, will you
go to your Beloved stuffed with worthless notions
or become a man of faith,
empty and unafraid?
The burden of Love
God is Love, You
say. Before I met You,
I had trouble believing
in God. You know the story –
How can God exist with so
much suffering in the world?
so much cruelty and
injustice –
with death separating us
all in the end?
But after many years with
You, my question is:
How can there not be a
God?
With so much suffering,
injustice, cruelty and death?
How can there not be a
God
to ultimately balance the
scales of Justice,
to restore Love and
Mercy, to reunite us
with all the loved ones
we have so innocently lost?
The doubters say religion
is a crutch, but I ask them,
‘Who do you know who is
not crippled?
Show me one heart that
has not borne the burden of Love.’
O Beloved, I believe in
the Eternal because You became flesh
then dropped that perfect
body to reappear within the human heart.
How much closer to us has
this incarnation brought You!
O child of God, Jesus is
not hiding somewhere behind the moon.
His sandals can be found
outside the door of every humble heart.
