Such Joy
To be able to eat food!
To be able to walk upon the Earth!
To see the leaves of autumn,
hear the rain falling,
feel the peace of a quiet moment,
the beauty of every jot
of existence within and without.
To be a part of all this!
Beloved God,
I know there are people right now
suffering in refugee camps,
there are people starving,
children with cancer,
families without shelter.
No doubt I have myself
been through such ordeals
in numerous lives I don’t remember
and am mercifully veiled from,
except—I hope—for
the flower of empathy
this suffering has produced.
But Lord,
Is there anything better than
a moment of pure appreciation
for this Gift from Your Treasury:
incarnate life?
As if You Yourself
were given eyes
and came here to see,
feel, taste and hear all this;
and I am Your “avatar” with a small “a”—
all of us are—
given the opportunity
to experience
a rare joy:
this life!
And though these moments
of experiential perfection
may not yet be continuous—
may they impress the reality of Perfection
deep, deep in every cell
until I can know
what Perfection
really is!
The Ecstasy of Chanting My Prayers on a Cold Night at 4 a.m., Under a Full Moon
Something about the bite of frigid air,
the ink of blue-black night and
the brilliance of that shining orb—
these wild, elemental presences
and the magnificent solitude,
everyone asleep in their condos as I set out
“on a dark night” to do my volunteer work—
praises to the One from whom all this beauty flows,
the One so much more beautiful still.
Striving to access the voice inside that speaks
not merely to the glory of Nature, but to and from
that One unimaginable Source.
Ghosts
They came to visit last night,
the ghosts of the worst
things I’ve done.
I hadn’t heard from them for a while.
They lay buried under the ground,
in what we call the past.
I’m not aware of what summoned
the first one, last night.
It was something I did casually
to someone before I was
mature enough to see
what pain I’d caused.
I’d thought of it as funny.
How could I have been
that cruel, I wondered,
freezing the memory
for contemplation: horrible
from every vantage point.
I began to bring up others,
some more accessible because
I’d paid a public price for them.
How will I ever live these memories down?
Will they continue to shadow
my relations in future lifetimes?
Are some like Styrofoam in a landfill,
which takes “500 to a million years” to break down or
“can only be incinerated at extremely high temperatures, leaving
a small amount of water and carbon as by-products?”
Life is
a terrible thing.
A school. What a school!
A moment’s indiscretion,
and you can pay for an interminable time
in the crucible of conscience,
even if almost no one else remembers.
Yet this is how we grow.
There seems no other way.
And even Styrofoam is not eternal,
as God and our own Godhood are.
Everything, sooner or later, becomes
part of the rich loam beneath us.
Meher Baba says: “I plant my seed of Love
not in your strength but your weaknesses.”
Maybe that
is all I really
need to know.
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images: Max Reif
