Before Abraham Was, I Am

"Jesus said unto them, Ameen Ameen, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, 
I am.  Then they picked up stones to cast at him." ~John 8:58

Before Abraham was, I Am.
Before the creation of the world, I Am.
Before the history of my tribe, I Am.
Before the trauma of my childhood, I Am.
Before the weight of yesterday
which is the weight of tomorrow, 
I Am. 
No history or memory or nightmare, 
no sequence of chromosomes
inherited from 10,000 drunken grandfathers
can outshine the self-emptiness 
of the present moment.
Before my ancestors were born, I Am.
They feel no thirst for my offerings, 
no hunger for my prayers.
They cannot wait for me to let them go,
so they too can be freed
by presence.
Unbound by any story
because love has no story;
unbound by any lineage
of masters, prophets, gurus, priests,
because love has no lineage,
I Am free.
Is time a thread
from the infinite past 
to the infinite future 
piercing through the needle's eye
of an ever-vanishing instant?
No, pilgrim friend, 
time is a boundless sphere
whose center is everywhere
and ever now.
We are each other's progeny,
we are each others ancestry.
Therefore, in this very moment,
all beings of the past, 
all beings of the future,
I touch, I heal, I transform
by this breath. Listen!
The croak of a tiny frog
bathing in the light of the moon
sends ripples of astonishment
through the galaxy, 
awakening hosts of dreamers
for seven generations past
and seven generations to come.
Silence rings the unstruck
hollow bell of night.
The rim overflows with a joyous 
chaos of stars.
It is not the Word that creates
but our listening!

Mandala by Hidegard of Bingen, 11th C.