To love others

To love others

To love others, the preacher said,
we must feel others' pain

but, how might we possibly do that
unless we first feel our own?

Turn and embrace, without looking
over its shoulder, our own pain.

Breathe in the saved-up-from-childhood
darkness and ignorance, panic and dread,

just to see if we might survive.
Flight, the sum moments of our lives

might be described as, from one anesthetizing,
enisling distraction to another, inside

and outside the mind while the truth
we need face may only be shadows

flitting about the room above our crib.
Pain is real, elemental, unavoidable

but its accompanying fear may not be -
and it is our own interior frontier

we must traverse - our cowering hearts
holding the torch, leading the way.

O child of God, to love our neighbors as ourselves
means nothing if we do not love ourselves.

                         

A living lie

A living lie

Jesus said, I am the Truth.
My Master said, I am nothing

but a living lie . . . .
For the two-millenniums-old Jesus,

the tattered scriptures, the crucified Christ,
He said - I am not the body.  I am not the mind.

For the Bhagavad Gita and the Buddha's mu,
He said - I am not this.  I am not that.

Jesus' phrase, having become a complacency,
is rejoined by a provocative conundrum.

I am nothing, said my Lord, but a living lie
of the truth that is Me.

To enter the realm of illusion (apparently)
Truth eternal must become a living lie -

not just for the Godman
but, for all God-in-human-forms.

O child of God, Meher added . . . and unless
the lie is dead, the Truth cannot be.

                   

various photos

 

 



Caleb

 Gus and Caleb

Austin and Elijah



Brian and Debbie

The Darnell Boys

Gus and Meg

Lily and Debbie

Brian

Austin, Gus, Caleb

Gus and Patrick

Lily

A babe in the woods

A babe in the woods

I fell for the world
and all its promises,

dream remnants
strewn and discarded

over a sad and painful terrain
and now I have fallen for You.

Will You let me down? -
a babe in the woods

to be led to and fro,
hither and yon,

no wisdom or discernment,
no knowledge or instinct

upon which to draw and depend.
No place to stand my ground.

Can I trust You?
How to trust one thing

over another?
asks my Lord.

Why not trust everything?
Stop playing the game

and only God is left
holding the bag.

O child of God, wanting and having nothing,
leaves nothing upon which to gamble.

                       (Unpublished)