God’s long shadow
Another journey awaits
us, o pilgrim,
through the broken gate,
the unkempt garden.
Death walks this fine
morning in God’s
long shadow – efficient,
indefatigable servant.
Even Jesus died and those
He detached
from Death’s arm soon
returned
dutifully to resume their
coupled trailing
through the lily-rucked
garden,
the rank and dew-drenched
garden.
The body of Jamshed
arranged in the Tower of
Silence
and the Master distributing
sweet laddoos –
Do not make the dead
unhappy,
Baba scolded, by your
weeping and wailing.
Jamshed was my brother, Meher averred,
but I am Jam Sheth – Death’s Master.
Death has brought Jamshed
to Me.
O child of God, living is
dying by loving.
Only the truly dead are
beyond Death’s grasp.
A hint of why
The Ocean has come again
to tell us we are not
adrift;
(more like a river running,
towards
and away, of urgency and
purpose).
The Ocean has come again,
with embracing, sighs and
gazes,
the wiping away of tears,
to tell us we are not
islands.
The Ocean, Its labyrinths
of Love and endeavor,
vast, breathless depths,
come again
to tell us we have no
shore,
strongest evidence to the
contrary;
no beginning nor end;
enemies
and companions – all are
our very own Self.
The Ocean has come again
to tell us our loneliness
is but a bitter-tinged
drop
in the immeasurable
loneliness of God.
O child of God, such an
import offers a hint
of why Meher lived in
silence.
Finding grace
Mehera asked, years ago,
why You chose
so barren a place for
Your ashram
(and Your Tomb) landscape
of dust
and thorns; scorpions,
cobras and kraits.
Then, My lovers, You said,
will come only for Me,
nothing else.
These days, You’ve turned
much of my world into
dust and thorns –
a bleak, prickly terrain
devoid of sustenance and
satiation,
rife with scrapes, stings
and venom,
so that each day, I show
up only for You
and when side-tracked,
return only to You,
as the friendly ground
shrivels
and the periphery grows
wilder,
more and more, finding
grace
in the isolation and
disparity,
in eccentricity,
disillusionment and despair.
O child of God, rejoice when
your life becomes a Tomb
in the desolate region of
a strange land.
The bruising rose
You told the story of an
innocent woman
accused of adultery –
tied to a post in the
marketplace,
everyone who passed
required by law
to cast a stone or some
filth upon her ...
which she endured with a
noble dignity;
her daughter was brought
forth, throwing
not a stone nor filth
but, a simple rose ...
and the mother shrieking
in agony
as it brushed her cheek.
Let he who is without sin
cast the first stone,
You told the crowd in
another marketplace.
You, of course, could
have cast that stone,
but You have come down,
bound Yourself
among the stones and
filth
of our marketplaces to
endure unjustly
the fateful punishments
of being human
and to weigh in Your
innocent hands
the culpability of each
stone-and-rose-wielding
patron, each laboring,
fearful heart.
O child of God, the
Beloved is ever merciful.
Protect Him from the
bruising rose of your infidelity.
