Journey of constant failures

Journey of constant failures 

Is this a straitjacket ...

or swaddling clothes?

the fruit immature ...

or rotten to the core?

This journey of constant failures –

a teaching story or a grinding wheel?

Should I try leaping across the river

or kneel on the bank and pray for angel wings?

Abraham whispered to his son, “I am an instrument.

I don’t know where my hands end and God’s begin.”

Suppose Isaac answered, “Everyone lives and dies

by the hands of God.

How fortunate if my last glimpse of this world

is the light in my father’s eyes –

“the light in the eyes of Love’s perfect slave.

Both under the knife, we have placed whatever we are

on our Father’s offering stone.

“Let us help each other now keep our appointments,

trusting to the benevolence

of That Which Is approachable only by dissolution,

sacrifice and utter surrender.”

O child of God, how did you ever come to the notion

that your life and death belong to you?

                     (from A Jewel in the Dust)                               

The lost language

The lost language

                                                                             

You had Your chance

but, held Your peace –

perhaps, because only a handful

understood Your language.

Later, Your silence became Gautama’s flower; 

a sand grain, a moon and stars’ silence;

the noiseless marrow of our bones;

the pause between heartbeats;

the silence of the backs of our hands,

the napes of our necks –

a silence wrapped in dust; the kernel of the grain;

the hollowness in the horn of plenty.

You had Your chance to speak –

and Your Word flooded the planes,

reaching the smallest, most turbulent and severe

of all our dry places; sated the heart

and began our re-acquaintance

with the lost language of God. 

O child of God, His dialogue is continuous and pervasive,

how could you ever feel beyond its range?  

(from Spoken For)           

I love love best

I love love best    

                                                                       

Gratitude roams the ruins of my heart –

tipping the scales in Your favor.

I’ve an urge to run through the streets

shouting Your name. 

Instead, I kneel and slowly burn.

Dawn bears the same fire on the eastern mullions.

It’s not so much that You love me

but that You give me love to give . . .

more and more, more and more

and still yet more.

I know nothing of worthiness, except 

it has everything and nothing to do with love!

O reader!  What might we discuss 

that you and I don’t already know?

Like the elephant in the dark –

everything is true at once!

I love love best as a fire in the chest – silently longing

for the whole house to become ash and cinder.

O child of God, what is there to say?

You are bewildered – inside and out.

(from Spoken For)

Utter Stillness

Utter stillness                                                                                   

I have always adopted, in this human dilemma,

the rational approach,

but, secretly, I long for a love that makes no sense.

My every motive is self-preservation,

while my heart’s wings propel me, inexorably,

toward oblivion.

Let those royal falcons build their nests

in the clefts and crags of Your holy mountain.

I want only to throw myself over the edge.

Let them haunt the rugged peaks.

My fate is farther down the slope,

where Your ocean swallows me.

Below that rugged exterior lie 

the quiet disintegration and utter stillness I crave.

O child of God, your longing is romantic and self-serving.

When will you see yourself as you really are?

                      (from A Jewel in the Dust)