The ring of truth
Thank You for all You have given me
and all You have taken away;
for remembering me
and for allowing me to remember You.
Thank You for wisdom’s ripening;
for the dust of the grave;
the shards of my poverty; for the rasp
of the world which has sharpened my longing.
Thank You for Your name
and the knowledge of Its significance;
for the soul’s dogged progression;
the inevitability of the goal;
for the human joy and affliction,
the revelation and mystification
which leads ultimately to dissolution,
to the unveiling of the indwelling Self and Union.
O child of God, the gratitude you’ve expressed
for years has begun to bear the ring of truth.
Join the tended sparrows
Everything is in God’s
hands.
So says my faith and what
a relief
to feel powerless and
ineffectual –
personal culpability
abdicated to karma’s iron law;
proceeding afresh without
the capacity
to botch entirely my soul’s
journey
or hurt any other except
as just another
heedless agent of God’s
inexorable will.
So let me stop now
wrestling with my bindings,
join the tended sparrows
in song-praise
among the God-noted
leaves, above
the numbered grains and
mustard seeds,
even to the corrupting
moths and rust
let me celebrate these
swaddling clothes;
tightly secured as I am
until fully accountable/
acceptable to God and my
destined ultimate liberty.
O child of God, whatever
occurs is perfect
and whatever does not
occur never could have been.
Of resolution and
resurrection
Beauty becomes a quiet
comfort
in the latter years,
giving of its depth
and essence without
intentions or purpose,
earning our honor and
attention
by virtue of its mere
existence.
One day Truth will be
like that.
We’ll cling to it even
through
the most bitter of
circumstances,
the most fearsome grief
because it lies
so purely, so resolutely
beyond our grasp.
It will taste medicinal
by then –
of resolution and
resurrection.
One day Truth will come
to our door
so pure, so vulnerable,
so lovely
it will be beyond us
to ever deny it anything.
O child of God, pray for
the day truth, love and beauty
all are expressed by the
same silent word.
Elegy
Not a word of scripture
to be quoted
over these bones but, at
graveside,
he would have tolerated a
short, silent prayer.
He took it as it came;
for what it was worth.
Good for the sake of
righteousness.
Honest in the cause of
truth.
Brave for honor’s sake.
Kind by decree of the
human heart.
He’d put aside any
fanciful notions
of heavenly reward or his
possible rebirth –
(he was convinced of his
own annihilation)
and thus, resolutely, he
went to his death.
Quietly cherishing joy,
enduring the pain,
he came closer to
surrender
than any religious man I
know. If he lacked anything,
it was the imagination
and longing to be anything
other than the man he
was.
As they lower his body
now into the grave
I am struck by how
closely
a coffin resembles a
crib.
O child of God, to surrender
is to yield,
earnestly and humbly, to
your destiny.
