One River, One Garden, Many Stars

What if Moses, Jesus and Muhammad
Were all born in the same small village,
Shared the same star at birth.
Would they have grown up as friends?
Embraced their similar yet distinctive
Revelations, shared as friends
Around the fire at night?

Suppose their mothers
Drew water from the same well,
Shared stories of the village fool,
Traded recipes and herbs from gardens,
Complained about husbands,
Babysat the other’s children?

Three mystics, born in fullness of their time,
Gathered in one village,
Validating their common discoveries,
Respecting differences,
Refusing to fight or kill each other….
Swimming naked in the river,
Camping out under stars at night,
Praying alone in the wilderness,
Would they know they shared One God?

And what of the forms my own heart knows?
Can I be broad pasture
Where many wild creatures rest
Under the heat of the day—
The river where water is shared?
Can I embrace such Love
That I follow
Wherever Love’s camels go?

Moses, Jesus and Muhammad
Did not arrive at faith only through scholarship
But through adventure of seeking Truth,
Deep dreams and wordless prayer in the desert,
Wondering under the canopy of stars.
It took great courage to give
Their very lives in service of humanity.
Does God ask less of me?

Give Me Freedom

I pray to be released
From every sense of confinement,
Confident that day will come,
Lift me away and out of myself.
No longer bound to ego, identity,
Memories of past or hopes for future.
Free me from all limitations of words,
Fears and even dreams of freedom.

Unlock my cage and dissolve all iron bars
That hold me firm upon the Earth.
Let me rise as warm air into cold night,
Drift into eternal Light that beckons,
Washes over Soul and cleanses all it touches.
It is not enough to hear the silence.
Allow me to embody Silence as a gift.

I need no reasons to prove, no necessary facts,
No inward road to follow. Let me rest in the place
Where everything waits in stillness, yet moves.
Warms but never burns. Creates, destroys,
Recreates to change a lasting chorus of joy.
Tears will freely flow until all pain
Has bled out of every artery and vein.

Let me be forgotten, unremembered….
And so to finally be at Peace,
Lulled to sleep yet also awakened
In that place where even Sun steps back a pace.
Held only in the Mind of God
I will finally wonderfully be absolved,
Dissolved, merged into only One.

Long Blue Shadows

 

Dreams emerge in sleepy darkness,
Weave images, wordless messages,
Plain and clear yet hidden in deep mystery,
Only hinted as they erupt from depths
Sensed but impossible to know
Except as seen through dark glass,
Cobwebs, all unknown, unknowable
Yet seeking to be known,
Rising this first step to consciousness,
Retrieved, remembered, claimed,
Surprised as truth long resisted.

There, spilled out upon the sheets,
Unseen by eyes, testifies in private,
Joined in morning’s meadow of wonder
More than those who breathe or those
Deceased, without whom my life
Would not be as it is, stretched out,
Lost within haunted woods,
Fallen to the bottom of deep well,
Water from the spring forever flowing
Into long blue shadows of the night.