"Kabir said: student, what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath."Honor your breath as the Holy Spirit
and She will honor your body as the garden
where Jesus meets his Paramour
and thorns become blossoms at dawn.
Learn to age the wine of longing
in the empty sepulcher of your chest.
Pour yourself without a word
into the cup of desolation.
Use the yeast of opposites to bake
your bread, letting it rise and get
delicious in love's dark oven.
The seed of beauty seems hollow at first.
Then it overflows. You bathed in that
boundless power before you breathed.
Is it any different now?
Let each inhalation surfeit you
with the blackness of un-created joy.
Let each exhalation cast you back
into the sea of the unborn.
Wait upon the Lord, not with a waiting
in time, but with a perfect bow.
Patience is the rapture of the humble.
Pure devotion is just listening.
Very soon, I promise, some invisible
Lover will fill you with unspeakable light.
Image: Mary Magdalene in the Mission Church of Santa Barbara
The Breath Inside
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