One gulp

One gulp                                                                                                     

There is no instead; no road not taken.

No opportunity lost nor circumstance forsaken.

We ride a tiger through an evanescent realm

unable to steer, stop, start or climb down.

Best make ourselves cozy as possible

high up there in the catbird seat;

ride the necessary rough and tumble,

become soul witness,

keep silence, suspend judgment

until the tiger turns upon each of us

and all our accoutrements

slip from their perch,

our whole accumulated world

devoured in one gulp.

O child of God, the more you distance yourself

from the game the nearer you are to God.

Hair shirt

Hair shirt       

Wool gave Sufis their name – 

desert ascetics in their harsh prickly robes.

I wear my own hair shirt these days.

O how it pierces, bites and stifles!

Where once they went unnoticed, taken for granted

comes now the stings of my arrogance,

sanctimony and self-satisfaction, my disdainful envy,

the rash flaunting of my cleverness

and my own vaunted exceptionality. 

O how now they chafe and bind when in retrospect

I compare my past (and current) sad posturing,

my feeble cloaked disguise

to the mute humility and renunciation

to which I so achingly aspire

and view so unequivocally as the next

fated stretch of the path set before me.

O child of God, self-knowledge is always painful

yet ultimately liberating in its prickly impracticality.

Castle in the air

Castle in the air                                                                                        

I’ve built a castle in the air, 

rooted precariously in the clouds.

I move through it daily inspecting

inconsistencies, shifts in solidarity

and alignment – yet also marveling each step

at its impracticable beauty and intricate improbability.

It began with a frail hope, then a desperate faith.

Now a feckless audacity keeps me

roaming its uncharted wings,

knowing what an absurd indulgence

my efforts are considered

by almost everyone stuck in the mire below.

Riding the clouds, built upon the wind,

having perhaps not a whit of substance

but, o I have found nothing

on terra firma to outweigh its promise,

its solace and my holy obsession

with its lofty, ethereal beauty.

O child of God, to reside within the mystery,

rise above everything on earth taken to be true.

Slow of speech

Slow of speech                                                                                         

How fearful and sad – Moses,

descending from the mountain

aware he could bring down only

God’s words – not (as he had witnessed)

His voice and fire.  God’s living truth

carved rigidly into stone – fixed, deadly,

visible from a thousand different views.

Slow of speech was Moses, his inarticulacy

even more pronounced and urgent

on the twist of his tongue around

the terrible, majestic truth of the God

he had to leave behind

whose presence below would have

broken all commandments, sealed all promises

and set burning His truth

into the hearts of humanity.

How could he explain?  The laws are a method,

a benevolence, a beginning, boundaries along the path

and God is always and already among His people

even though they know Him not.

O child, God conceals Himself in a cloud,

saying, no man sees My face and lives.