For Him also
Time apparently non-existent before God
premiered His kaleidoscopic Creation,
breaking Himself into pieces – near and far,
large and small, lover and Beloved;
space emerging with time like conjoined twins;
color not existing until He broke
the Light of Himself over His own knee;
movement not existing until the fragments
swam to each other, embraced and kissed.
Separating Himself; leaving us
to make our own sense of His strewn
bits, textures, shapes and colors.
For us all apparently to exist and know ourselves
but for Him also, in relation to us,
for how could Love ever Be without a lover
and how could God ever exist without a
witness?
O child of God, the One became two,
says the old man, then three, then ten thousand.
Yonder
You might have to leave your home
and go yonder; leave your loved ones,
the land of your birth and go yonder;
for the sake of family and friends,
go yonder, yonder, alone,
across the wide meadow;
nothing romantic or remarkable,
just the quiet unfolding of fate
and the winding of the path into the hills
from which comes your strength.
O beloved Lord, you might ask,
or silently require of the impersonal Way –
open Your gate – for nothing else matters
because everything else matters;
because ephemeral beauty, truth and virtue
are beautiful and virtuous and true;
because Love is majestic and Its own validation.
You might have to leave home and go yonder,
yonder, yonder on a singular path
until God and It, the Life and the Way,
are no longer out of grasp
but in your hands and under your feet at last.
O child of God, lonely is the path of Love
and
impersonal the Buddha’s Way.
Untapped reservoir
When I had nothing better to do,
nothing else going on, I would reach out
to the Lord of the universe. Little ol’ me.
And, of course, when troubles arose
I was always right there tugging at His coat.
Just in case it was true.
One day, down a lonely path,
through a flurry of leaves,
I saw Him ahead of me, plainly beckoning,
inviting me to His house for tea.
If you’re not too busy, He said.
If you’ve nothing better to do.
Tears, held back a lifetime,
wet my cheeks, the sleeves of my coat –
cleansing rivers coming from the broken,
untapped reservoir within my chest.
O child of God, wherever fate takes you
never
forget the mercy of the Lord of Mercy.
Adapting the words of Shunryu Suzuki –
God is not something to find.
God is something you are.
The Way is not something to figure out.
The Way is something to express.
Let’s sit down here in the cypress shade.
In this quiet dust take up our instruments.
And we will ask no questions;
take no measurements
but learn to play and sing –
not to express ourselves but to express God.
O child of God, Meher said you are looking
for something you have never lost.
