Leave

From time to time
with shamanic elegance
you must disappear.
Leave speech behind
and rest in the place 
where words began.
Abandoning images,
become the mirror itself.
Drop the oars of believing,
left and right.
Let the sail of your religion
be shredded by the winds
of Grace.
The mind is a little boat
without a rudder.
Why not step out
upon the deep?
The ocean of silence
where you were at home
before you drew your
first breath,
where waves of wonder
uplift you,
a gilded moon-path leads you 
to the midnight horizon,
and a new land appears
beneath every step.


Mary Magdalene on the shore in Provence, painted by Sue Ellen
Parkinson, also the cover of my book, 'Strangers & Pilgrims.'

Composted Roses

 

I lost the heavy

      burden of lack

            when I embraced

                 my emptiness.

      Now I am full.

            My breathing pitches

      her tent on every star.

Each cell of my body

                  is her palace.

      One atom of me contains

            swirling Andromeda.

I lack no thing because

            I possess nothing.

      Possessing no thing

            I can be everywhere.

The smaller I become,

      the more useful I Am.

If you like, I will meet you

      here, at the center

            of the rose,

      the one you even now

            hold in your hand,

      shriveled and parched,

            the one you are about

                  to throw away.

Why won't you do that

      with your body?

            Throw yourself away

      like milkweed

                  in Autumn wind?

Is your heart not already

      the boundless space

            you call "away"?

What withers nourishes

                   creation.

     The deepest work is to be food.

          Why not just become

                a sacred meal?

Don't feed the big things,

           feed the little ones.

     That's what scatters you

                throughout the universe.

Break up

      your mighty nation

            into bio-regional republics,

      into villages, into gardens.

                  Honor the loam.

Kneel to nitrogen, potassium,

      ammonia molecules

            in a possum carcass.

Scatter your exhalation

      over landfills

                  and rubbled cities,

      feeding the inbreath

            of every newborn child.

What would Jesus do?

      He would become bread.

            "Take, eat,

                  this is my body.

      Drink this wine,

                  it is my blood."

If you want to follow his Way,

      make a covenant with worms.

Dish out your protein

                  to the bacillus.

      Glut the microbe,

            that royal bride
                 of entropy.

Your wedding is the loam itself.

      You are the crumb, 

            you are the waste,
      the compost,
                and the inheritance.

Become smaller.

           Become useful.

                 Become food.



Photo by Morgyn Church

To Remind You

 

To remind you of

      the soft explosion

           in your chest,

Emptiness invented flowers.

     When you gaze into them

           you return
     to her diamond womb

where orbits sing planets
          through the dark

          and angels churn
               the milky vacuum

     into golden butter,

                    your body...

Now grieve away the veil
     of doubting

               and dive naked 

     into the ocean 

          of this breath.

Has She not created
                your face

     to temper the blinding night

          of her counsel? 

Why can't you look into
     a deeper self
               with the mirror
          of compassion?
Inside the absence
               of noise

          is another kind of silence,

the throb of her fingers

     on the lute of your spine,

          the tremor of a poem

               before its word,

Magdalene stealing barefoot 

          into your garden

     to visit a sepulcher of bones.
Here is where
               the dancing will spring up
          when April comes.
      It is why we have Winter,

          why her stillness whets
 the blades of inhalation,

               cleaving hearts

     not in one but

          in two
for the sake of love.

 

Flower by Kristy Thompson

Sit and Stay

Sitting

What could be simpler than sitting, just sitting, late on an October afternoon, witnessing a sunbeam pour through the soft spot in my crown, soaking these eyes in the source of seeing, pure liquid light not granulated into thoughts, trickling down my throat and spine into the humble valley just below my breastbone, where a sparkling torrent of inhalation shatters my heart into ten billion stars, the infinitesimal quantum hologram of the galaxy, golden overflow into the sacrum, spilling loins, rooting toes in the mushroom pulse of leaf loam, mingling my nucleotides and moldering my cytoplasm into one slow silent thunderbolt of love – the love of earth for sky, of breath for bone, of every pilgrim thread from sun-spindled darkness for its chosen bead of glory in this host of grails, our human flesh. Silence is beauty, friend, and each cell of your body is a chalice for holding the Christ. Practice this.

Staying

Yet when my root cannot deepen in the ground of silence, because it meets only rock and thin soil, stones of resistance and doubt, pain in the body or anxiety of mind, then what can I do? Nothing. Simply stay. My very willingness to stay, to witness the pain and resistance, becomes the mulch that nourishes my seed. My willingness to remain, just to remain here, is the compost of my resistances that enriches my root. Patience is not required where there is no time. The witness does not dwell in time. Time is the passage of thoughts, not what I actually Am. As I witness and breath through them, my very wounds and worst habits are the loam of dark energy, the organic fire that flowers my soul. The first and last instruction is: rest the mind in the heart, and simply stay.

Offered as guided meditation on SoundCloud HERE
Ryoanji Buddhist temple, Kyoto

Your Shaman Charged Too Much

The shaman charged you too much

for your own breath.

The savior hid your soul under a cup

and switched it with his own.

The guru ran off with your Shakti

during the honeymoon,
Your soul came home weeping and ashamed.

Meanwhile the leftist tricked you

into thinking you were a victim,

while the fascist promised to make you great again

if you worshiped his flag and carried an AR-15.

The yoga teacher told you your body was God

but the new age channeler of Ascended Masters 
insisted your flesh was an illusion.

So you took a workshop in Bali
with a non-duality master who used to be
a tennis pro named Marvin
but calls himself Ananda now,

and spent the whole $5000 weekend
reminding you that he teaches Nothing
because there is no one to teach.

You felt guilty when you cancelled his check

and sent him a new one made out for zero.

Maybe that's why you went back to church

and tried to feel like a sinner

so you could get saved,

but there was Nothing to get saved from.

What will you do now

that you've followed every path

and wound up here

in the old growth forest again?

Don't become a cynic, friend.

Just take off your shoes and wander

all night barefoot on broken moonbeams

among the Bleeding Fairy Helmets,

fungi mycena haematopis,

sprawling in trillium, cradled by cedar roots.
Listen through the darkest hours
to raven croak and owl wing whisper,

embodying the howl of grandma coyote,

until you're lost enough to cry,

'I am home, I am home!'

Autumn Night

 

On this Autumn night I gaze up at ten million stars. I do not bow my head, I tilt it back in wonder. I want to pray, but there is nothing to ask, nothing to desire. Yet I want to pray. I am not silent. I use words. "I love you." To whom do I pray? To whom do I say, "I love you"? I don't know. It doesn't matter. I merely gaze into the stars, into the infinite space between and beyond the stars, which is the space between my thoughts, and the space in every atom of my flesh. "I love you." Then, perfect silence. Are we one or two? It doesn't matter. The intellectual, the theologian, the philosopher, cannot fathom my foolishness. My happiness.

Photo, NASA Hubble, star clusters

Listen Child

Listen child,

To your breath belongs the gentle power

that created the sun.

Your inhalation awakens stars in your body.

Your exhalation charges the moon and planets

with atom-whirling fire.

Mountains, streams, clouds and forests live
because you are alive.

No one will teach you this in school.

They don't want you to be filled

with your own invincible radiance.

You must learn it from the terrible sweet drum
of your heart.

Listen child,

whatever you dream of,

whatever you desire,

whatever you worship,

you are That.

Photo, Abby, our first child

When I Was In Seminary

When I was in seminary, a "famous theologian" gave a big speech. During the question and answer period, I raised a point. "If God is absolute Being, and I Am, then my being is God, isn't it? Not just me, but a flower. God is the being of every flower. And God is the being of a fly on the window."

Everyone in the lecture hall was shocked and silent. I guess we weren't allowed to ask questions like that. Then the theologian explained that, while God's Being is absolute, our being is only "contingent being." I just stared at him, saying to myself, "WTF is contingent being?" I sat down.

People wouldn't join me in the dining hall. They thought I was a heretic. They whispered, "universalist." I asked, "What is a universalist?" They said it was someone who believes that God's grace pours equally upon all, no matter what their religion, whether they confess the Apostle's Creed or not. I said, "Yes, that is exactly what I believe."

So I decided I could never be ordained as a Christian minister, because everyone is already ordained by their first breath, which is the breath of God.

Ano Raniyan

                             

The Vedas declare, "Ano-raniyan mahato-mahiyan: One particle of the smallest is greater than the greatest." Little things are much more important than big things, because big things are made out of little things. You are not your nation, your religion, your political party, or your race. Only 1% of your genes come from your parents. The other 99% belong to microbes. You are the sum of the myriad guests you host in your cells and chromosomes. The protons in your atoms are pilgrims from the stars. When you know how infinitesimal you are, you become vast. You become a child of the galaxy.

Hubble:galaxy NGC1961

The Choice

Given the choice,
I'd rather be a fool
than a cynic,
sitting backward on my donkey
riding Westward and
gazing at the dawn,
shouting to the sun, "Old fellow,
follow me! I'll lead you
to Summer meadows at noonday
and Autumn afternoons,
to Winter evenings and I'll
show you where stars dwell
in the sacred dark."
You laugh?
Don't be a cynic, friend.
Let's just say there's a
fifty fifty chance
our eyes create the light they see.



Mula Nasruddin riding backward on his donkey

Mother Raven

There is no beginning.

 Let a swarthy unknown Goddess

be your breath.

Then you won't need any law

but wonder.

Just for a little while 

sorrow and joy

will drink from the same bowl,

the one you've been holding

in your rib cage

and polishing too carefully.

True chalices get chipped  

and tip over.

Spill your dark energy now.

What Mother Raven offers in 

her fire-flecked feathers

and ravishing beak

is not a sun to dip in heart wine

but the spiraling splendor 

of all that is hollow,

whirling inward.

Take, eat, this is the portal 

to the uncreated.

There is no end.

Image by Cororo on DeviantArt

We Tried

 

I am a person.

The Goddess is a person.

We tried oneness and non-duality,

but that was no fun.

So I and Thou

just dance.
Advaita blossoms

in the play of lovers.
We flower in the dark,
the moon and I.
There are not enough stars

to fill our cup, 

so we drink from

the ancient beauty 

of emptiness.
This merging and re-emerging

of Lover and Beloved

is a pulsation 

in the silence of the heart
that creates every particle

out of the void.
I simply let Her be 

my breath

and forget all the rules 

but Joy and Kindness.

Photo by Bahman Farzad