Each of my wounds,
every pain,
was a withholding.
Never mind
the reasons.
You don’t need
ten plagues
to make the point
if you have
the miracle
of uncertainty
in your life.
It teaches
unceasingly,
without relent.
I realized
the other evening
in the car:
the only fear
I’ve ever had
is a question
about what I might
be asked to give.
Jesus
knows this question
well—has explored
its every angle—
but no one
can give your answer
for you. So we rode
for miles in silence,
parallel to the fall.
The sky was cloudy.
The light, dim.
The answer,
when you give it finally,
comes as trembling relief,
because what is true
can never be changed.
The admission of your need
changes everything.
Stake me to the sky. Let me watch the fire tonight. Tear me open and pass me around. Whatever’s needed, take it. Hollow me out. I can’t hold this secret
any longer.
Hafiz came along
and asked what
I was doing
up there in that tree
with soot all over my face
and my hair in greasy knots,
my feet scratched, blistered and bleeding,
my wick burned down to the sputtering last,
my eyes wild and leering,
and talking to myself in curses and run-ons
about trying one last time
to impregnate the sky
with the signal flare seed
of the holy calvary I required.
The snarling, yipping wolves
skulking around the base
of the tree showed no sign of tiring.
I put the last flare into the gun,
whispering an impromptu litany
of sacred incantations and
humble beseechings,
proposed terms and conditions
and sacrificial boundaries.
For example,
the house and car. Take them.
The paintings, too. Fine.
If at all possible, I should like to keep
that bottle of 1921 Bordeaux.
It’s such a small thing, really.
Unexpectedly, the crown of the tree
caught fire. The crackling heat
was extremely unnerving
and I grit my teeth in heroic fashion.
I need a miracle, Hafiz! I shouted,
momentarily squinting down
through the smoke
in his direction for emphasis.
Do you hear me!?
I hear you, he said,
a little nonchalant for my present liking.
But don’t you think it may be best
to let this last one run its course
before we ask for the next?
Whatever.
I looked around,
wondering if I could throw myself
across the gap to the next tree.
A flash of neon pink whizzed by.
Was that a frisbee!??
I watched myself watch
a wolf pup whimper with delight
and dash forth from an explosion of pine needles
to stalk the whirling, lazily-arced disc.
What was this!?
I turned back to the scene below me.
Hafiz was petting the damned alpha male,
who was resting on his haunches,
eyes narrowed with pleasure,
his tongue lolling out
the side of his fang-toothed jaws
in limp satisfaction of a job well done.
Hey, Hafiz! I shouted.
Is this one almost over?
What do you say?
Wanna’ come down?
I booked these guys all night
if you want to shoot that last flare.
Or we could call it.
I thought about it.
Ashes from the burning tree
were stinging my face and arms.
Yeah. I reckon so.
I started looking for a foothold below me.
I tried to lower myself down towards it,
but I was just shaking.
I got hit in the chest by this wave,
by how real it had all felt,
by how close I’d come.
All that running for my life,
stumbling through the trees
like a ghost bleeding out
into the air behind me,
a perfect trail they could follow.
Being hunted night and day with no relief.
Wading the ice cold river.
Shivering, huddled, and nothing to eat.
Carried somehow, by the space around me.
All alone.
Pulled taut.
Broken down into fragments,
a gangly collection of whispers and needs.
I coalesced to a point, locked eyes with that wolf.
In the fire above me, I could hear the singers.
In the wolves’ eyes, I could see the dancing flames.
In my tears, the return of eternity to my chest.
Life is a ceremony with the strangest ending.
Whatever happened packs up and moves out of town.
The circus ground is left barren and quiet.
You’re caught in Love’s bag,
held by a power so great you can’t comprehend it,
just so very relieved to be there once again,
with nothing left but the glory of who you are.
A little over a week ago Linda nominated this blog for an award, and being Award Free here I graciously declined but expressed my appreciation for the recognition. Linda’s intent was clear and heartfelt, however, and revolved around expanding relationships and the threads of connection in this virtual realm. I felt I wanted to honor the intention in some fashion. So, I’ve been thinking since then off and on about relationship in general, and the role it plays in releasing the creative power within us. Having witnessed a number of persons in my limited sphere of awareness facing difficulties that seem intractable, Linda and myself included (though in what seem like very different ways), it seems a worthy topic to explore.
There’s a phrase that appears with increasing frequency as one moves through A Course of Love: unity and relationship. This jab-jab-hop…POW! is not only the means of accessing and expressing the power native to our being, but the most profound outcome as well. Like all good paradoxes, this phrase expresses a wholeness that seems to have two incompatibly shaped faces. One side is square. The other is round. And yet it’s a single coin.
The coin is tossed high into the sky. Call it! Square or round?
Square.
(Lands. Square side up.)
Square it is. Do you kick or receive?
Both.
Perfect. Off you go then.
Without unity, we are like a disassembled engine. A lot of parts twirling each other around and trying to figure out how we snap together. The worlds that stymie us are the ones where the parts have each decided to be an engine all of their own. Having come from engine, they know the power of engine. Knowing the power, they think they can bring it forth. They remember it. They feel it. But without reassembly, there is only frustration. No part can achieve independently, what already and only is. So yeah… Unity.
I think it’s important to bear in mind that Unity is the power itself, before it became the engine. Unity is the power that was always there. Unity is the power that can never be touched. As well, unity is meaningless without relationship. It doesn’t stand on it’s own in Creation. Without relationship, unity is everything at once, undifferentiated and nonexistent. And there can be no exchange this way. No movement. No expression. Unity is not relationship but nor is it fully separable from it.
To have an engine, you need parts, and to have parts working in connection, you need differentiation. You need valves and wires and cylinders and tubing. You need belts and gears and pulleys and a computer. But if you have all that, the relationships between them allow power to flow. (Everything in it’s right place. See footnote below.) The relationship too, is not quite what it appears, because it is also invisible. It is not really separate from unity. Relationship binds each to each, it doesn’t merely connect one guy to the next guy. Relationship isn’t about how many beings you rub up against if you swing your arms. All to all and each to each are contained in the invisible, timeless field of relationship. Each part of that whole engine emerged from the invisible, pure, audacious power of the formless engine. Directly. From unity. Each part has access to the whole idea and power of the engine, not just to a little piece of it. And yet each part expresses uniquely in the manifest realm as the power is made manifest.
But the world we experience on a daily basis is one where the parts aren’t quite set up properly, or so it seems. One idea I find mind-blowing is that our suffering is itself a type of wholeness. It’s a strange notion, but it makes some sense to me. We like to resolve our suffering into particular “issues”, and then solve them. This is how we think when acting and responding as separate beings. We think everything is separable. We think everything can be broken into manageable pieces and tackled. We think there is an isolable cause– one and only one cause– for each difficulty. I’ve come to view this as far too simplistic. Our suffering, too, is whole. It affects us in our entirety. We’re not just broken in specific facets of our lives, we’re broken everywhere. Suffering is simply a distortion of wholeness, and I think we can see that when we finally are overwhelmed by it. Then it’s everywhere-at-once nature becomes more tantamount.
Everything sucks all together.
Then Hafiz walks through the room like a one-man marching band, playing seventeen instruments at once. A finely polished kazoo. A belt of tambourines. And a harmonium. And the break, if it comes, breaks through everywhere. We can’t find ourselves at all… We’re gone… But we’re alive in relationship with all that is…
I love the sentiments of A Course of Love. I need the release of the power described therein. I need to be honest about this. The cessation of suffering isn’t a nice-to-have. If your suffering has temporarily reached the ludicrous zone, the breakthrough is probably marching right now around the granite walls you’ve built around your heart. In seven days time, the walls will come tumbling down. Things will snap together.
I feel close to the sun, and there’s the sensation: you either dissolve into a gentle, living warmth, or you burn to a crisp. There’s a phase change to my being that I both desire and sense is proximate, but before it is complete it feels like the wheels may fall off.
That’s okay. Hafiz is a good band. Worst case I carry the sheet music for him.
Unity and relationship. Linda was onto something. If you’re scrambling to pick up the pieces, you’re in good company. Remember your part has a unique little widget function thingamajig that no other part quite has, and it’s needed to make the redacto-flux-wave guide-dip tube function properly.
There’s a new policy in heaven
I wish to discuss.
Instead of a life review,
they set you out in a meadow
full of this special grass
that tickles your feet incessantly—
a meadow with songbirds full of mirth and wit
that line up in the sky
to land on your shoulder
one after another
and offer a joke or a poem before
disappearing altogether…
Oh—!
…and of tornadoes that swoop through sporadically,
thunderous, crashing cyclones
of inescapable proportion and power
that engulf your tiny visage
and whisk you into the sky
like the parasol seed of a dandelion
for a ballroom dance
of unprecedented magnitude.
Once your laughter breaks through
that nervous, indignant,
put-me-down-right-this-instant stage,
the jubilation so long bottled up
bursts forth into expression
like a stop motion video
of the Beloved’s botanical gardens
the day the pure idea of your being
was uttered upon the waters,
and then, realizing
what you’d always kept safe within you
and never lost,
you might shake loose
your residual tears
from up there in the sky—
or maybe it’s just all that air
rushing past your eyes—
before finally settling
into a giddy, gracious Phew-eeee!
May I have another!?
Oh my goodness.
(Breathlessness)
Golly, who am I? Why this, of course.
Oh. Right. Your welcome.
At which point
you find yourself
at a grand party
where you get to wear
a funny, cone-shaped hat
secured by a disappointingly feeble elastic,
are obliged listen to some curious speeches
that don’t make any sense,
and then encouraged to blow out some candles.
The truth is,
the reviews were getting to be such
tedious affairs.
One personal electronic device
could take centuries to decode.
There’s one other policy
I daresay is worth mentioning:
Home Delivery.
Twenty-four
seven
three
sixty
five.
I recommend
keeping an eye out
at all times
for benign catastrophes,
world-loosening exhalations,
visitations by strange poets,
and the arrival of talking birds.
Particularly if you
are visited by a talking bird,
let’s not freak out, clam up,
or explain it deftly away
the way you once did
when confronted by
the whole glorious wilderness
of human experience.
It’s only been a few days,
but I’m back for more.
The life of an addict.
My moments have become cracked glass,
but there is a hint of honey in my tears.
It’s been
a bittersweet epiphany:
I’m not cut out
to be the person
I’ve been being.
I’m a crash test dummy
careening into the wall
of nothing whatsoever.
For a moment
I was full and clear,
a moment without the traffic,
unfettered,
remembering
what he told me,
hugging it close to my chest,
wanting to tell complete strangers about it,
holding it up to the sky
from time to time
like the negative image
of the moment when
everything had changed for me.
But then I failed
to meet the deadline
and they were disappointed.
The sole of my
right shoe split open,
and the guest speaker
told me how she
was fighting every day
to save the rest of us
from our own destruction,
which seemed staggeringly
meaningful,
and the teacher
encouraged me to take
a more effective stance
in my child’s future,
and they forgot
to put the dressing
on the side,
and I was spoken to again
about my grasp
on the situation.
Or lack thereof.
Wouldn’t I have thought
someone in my position
would have realized
what was happening?
And so here I am.
Trembling a tad.
Flowing.
Holy.
Ready.
I need this.
The thing is:
I’ll never live up to myself.
That type of suffering
will set you free.
Jesus meets my gaze,
holds a finger to his lips
to seal this pact of silence,
then decides to wash my hair.
Afterwards we sit
at the little table
by the back porch
and I empty my pockets
of the crumpled scraps of paper.
We examine them together.
I’m getting anxious.
This is the hard part.
Where I give one up.
One at least.
He’d take them all if I let him,
but the thought alone is crushing.
It’s all I have left… these aspirations.
The life of an addict.
He wants me to run on empty.
He wants my face to be a mystery.
So lizards will stop chewing
when I stumble past,
and wonder,
Where’d that come from?
He does…
He.
He?
This.
This heart of mine
that understands me perfectly
and keeps trying to let me in on the secret.
To the spotlight operator, it’s just another night. Another show. Another transient gathering of pinstripe suits, twinkling diamonds, and feathered boas. They come in from all over the world, glittering and polished, to stand time still for a flickering hour, to bask in the unknown and the unpredictable, to say they were there, to hobnob beneath the halogens. For a brief moment, nothing else will matter, as everyone’s power is handed in to the performance, all the chips put in play, and then in a flash it will end.
The pageantry can only hide the steady progression of time’s river for so long. Like a white hot finale of fireworks, the brilliance will fade and drift through the empty sky of awareness, dissolving first into a puff of smoke, and then into the night itself. Silence will tuck it away for safe-keeping. Then, with alarming efficiency, what never was will be torn down and packed up, crated and shipped. The hall will be emptied. The stage will be cleared. The detritus of drink containers and snack boxes will be collected and crushed.
She’ll be long gone by then, the spotlight operator. As the fork trucks rumble to life in the hall, she’ll rise from her bed and too little sleep, and slip quietly down the hall to cook her son breakfast.
* * * * *
I haven’t written much about sport on this blog, but I think like anything, it’s what’s alive within the experience that matters– not how it’s dressed up for presentation. When I flopped on the sofa last night after a brief, end-of-week jog to vegetate for an hour, I happened upon a preview of tonight’s Floyd and Manny Show. When it was over, I realized somewhere along the way tears had come to pool in my eyes.
And for what…
I remembered that back when I started this blog, when I was taking my first timid steps into expressing myself in an open forum, I wrote a description of myself on the “registry” for a Course of Love—which I think has since been taken off-line– that was based on the image of Jesus as my trainer, whispering in my ear while I worked the bag, while I sweat out the toxins of my bitterness, my false starts and my conceptual selves. There’s a power in that image for me. There’s the devotion of Jesus, his carrying the knowing of a certain outcome, his drawing it forth through the purity of his presence, unwilling to settle for anything less than truth, and then there’s the power of inner strength becoming mobilized through action. Through willingness. Through stepping into the gym of life each morning and surrendering to its unerring discipline.
I don’t know squat about boxing, but I could see the way Manny’s trainer, suiting up each morning to tutor his pupil despite the looming challenges of Parkinson’s, was an act of Love. The way Manny returned it with his own devotion. The way fist hit fist, glove hit glove– pop, pop, pop!— in a ritual that was thousands and thousands of days in the making for those two. The way they met there, at the center between them, giving themselves wholly to the pure process neither could make on his own. The way they hovered around something wordless and elusive. I could see the way we build each other up with our relatedness, and our recognition.
There’s also something hidden deep inside the meeting of two personas in the ring– an intimacy I can’t explain but of which I caught a whiff. The vulnerability of putting it all on the line, of being known, of each heart being drawn out by the other. Of witnessing the familiar through difference. This may seem a romantic notion, and it obviously is, but I like to think the fight tonight is but a few hours in a vast trajectory. The questions it will ask of each man will burrow into them and steep for years to come. Each will be changed by each. Forever. Boxing is ultimately but one of an infinitely arrayed modes of expression, an avenue for discovery and relationship. Our lives are not made in the brightly lit moments, but in the thousands of days in the gym, before and after, where we encounter the fullness of our own hearts when no one else is looking.
The fight tonight is just sport. Nothing to get overly excited about, but perhaps an analog to the challenges of our own days and lives. It’s not a question for me about who will win. From the outside looking in, I can see it’s a journey towards revelation, it’s an encounter, a strange relatedness. There’s room in the peculiar brand of holiness with which I trade to see– right now– that Floyd possesses the heart of a man who could change the world. We’re all far greater than anyone we’ve ever been. There’s room for grace to find any being in any place and time. For eternity to tell its story through any and every available medium.
So…
Jesus and I are taking a little break.
You have to set boundaries.
have to have to have to have to
My side is like this:
after a couple of fervent decades
during which time I was strung out
on mantras, kale juice,
free range chicken egg beaters,
galactically resonating yoga poses,
tantric how-to illustration books,
and uncompromising techniques of detachment,
I turned the cracked pavement corner
of my block to square up
my AM walk for the home stretch,
observing with pride the way
the white-hot, light-refracting stripes
of my new Puma sweats
were cutting through the morning pallor
like the afterimage of a light saber duel,
when lo! my brothers! my sisters!
I looked to the sky
just in time to see
a three foot diameter hail stone
bowl a strike through my
living room.
That was the last straw, dammit.
The trophy room, though struck by ice,
displayed signs of highly exothermic processes.
When you see yin and yang
conspiring to defeat the sanctity
of your own dwelling,
you can guess you know who is at it,
whose name we do not speak,
lest he overhear our thoughts
and take it upon himself
to emerge from the center
of our chest like a rosebud
octave progression
of grace and compassion
threatening to obliterate
everything you’ve worked for
in your entire life
and to which
you are rightfully entitled.
Enough said.
I need a stable catalyst
of my personal apocalypse,
not one of these karmic gunslinger types.
So,
I see Jesus now
standing in the corner,
wordless and serene
while I order my coffee,
or on top of buildings
off in the distance
while I’m driving
down the highway.
He hands me a towel
when I step out of the shower,
and shows me the ripe apples
in the supermarket.
But I still don’t look his way.
No.
You have to set boundaries.
have to have to have to have to
Then one day my friend
with the season tickets
found somebody else
or the season was over
or my favorite pitcher needed Tommy John’s
or something,
and I couldn’t remember
a single one of my mantras
or poses or practices
and suddenly I was on my knees
in the middle of fifth avenue,
crumpled over on the manhole cover,
bathed in the white plume
of a leaking subterranean steam valve,
quivering like a jello sculpture
undergoing low frequency attunements.
I was trying to conduct business
with the sky itself,
somehow oblivious of the fact that
a three foot diameter ball of ice
had already been visited upon me
in an utterly benign fashion,
and the answer had preceded the question.
And he was there.
Like he always is.
On all four sides,
holding up traffic
with the palm of his hand,
and hovering in the air
above me, letting my every thought
filter through his chest,
and crouched beside me
with his arms wrapped around me,
whispering in my ear:
My friend…
my friend…
let me help you…
Perhaps it is time
to conclude
this sacred
transaction…
I used to think the very act
of coming out
to this frontier town,
to this slat-walled refuge
set down in the wild light
and crooning darkness,
would be sufficient.
A proof of concept.
Like I could purchase
everlasting freedom
with an act of unexpected boldness.
Without thinking it per se,
I believed that
after packing just my necessaries
and lashing them down,
selling the house and the grandfather clock,
then riding west across
creaking leagues of hunger and cold,
creeping ever closer to that fiery horizon
set with slinking, four-legged shadows
and the blackened silhouettes
of wide-rimmed sharpshooters,
certain things would be behind me.
I kept my storefront modest
and well-painted. Well-lit.
I was polite in my dealings.
My ambitions were trimmed right down,
and I had many a neighborly conversation.
But still, I had this toothache
at the center of my being,
something that snuck up on me,
a wounding numbness
that was spreading
despite my every earnest labor with
diversified horsehair brushes,
pastes of pulverized charcoal and brick,
and brandied potions of sage, peppermint and salt.
It was leaking out through my bedroom window
and through the neighboring fields
underneath the nighttime stars,
to where the cows had bloated
and rolled moaning onto their side,
to where the sanded winds got riled up
and tore through town like stampeding furies.
It pained me sometimes,
during encounters,
while I was taking inventory,
or while walking along
the boardwalk,
through candlelight.
So finally
I went and saw the dentist.
He had this little shop
I’d always avoided,
a nook down the alley.
There was no wait.
I was surprised to ascertain
that he understood
all about the phenomenon
of a non-local toothache.
He wrote me a prescription
for healing by the means
of ever-present holy sensations.
Tore it off his pad
and jammed it in my shirt pocket.
Slapped me on the back
and turned me loose.
How’s it work?
Next time that ache comes on,
you just pull out your prescription
and read it.
So that’s what I did.
About two days later.
First thing is:
your heart is not a tooth.
Therefore, it is not susceptible to decay.
But you will ache like one
for however long you are confused on this point.
Breath this idea
into every hidden cavity of your being
and savor it like a two dollar peppermint paste.
Please—
before any more cows turn sideways.
Let us both enjoy a full night’s sleep,
my friend.
Once
Hafiz and I
were walking along the beach
beneath a violet sky
that had gathered around
a glowing sliver of the moon,
speaking existentially
about sunken barques
drift wood
hand-carved initials
and the audacity
of the ruffled tulip,
when the pounding surf
whistling winds
and rush of mad-honking gulls
tripped a lever inside of my
famished organs of persona.
I was suddenly swimming
in the need to give my whole life away,
to tear it free of its traces
and present its ragged threads to the sky.
Instinctively, I dove inward
to bring up
a bucketful of meaning
from the ocean at the center of my being,
but when I opened my mouth
to speak with the rich timbres of authenticity
all I could muster was a puff of dust–
a smoky word or two
laced with the perfume of needs
many thousands of years old.
Inconceivably
exhausted from the effort,
I shuddered, and heaved over onto my side.
Waves crashed into stone.
A falcon descended from the sky
and came to rest on his outstretched arm.
What’s that?
The first one.
The first one what.
The first need trapped
inside of you to be set free.
A mouse peeked out
through a stand of grass further
up the beach,
of which my need and I
took careful note.
I was just going to say
I love you, I said.
Not all this.
You think there is a difference?
As he said this,
I felt a lever trip inside of my
famished organs of persona,
filling me with the urgent
need to bury every last scrap
of my given nature
at the foot of an ancient tree,
and then I coughed up a buffalo.
Jesus is my breath.
He is the blood in my veins,
the white of my bones,
and the thoughts of my heart.
He is the stones in the ground,
the birds in the field,
and the wood drifting down the river.
Behind the wincing in thieves,
the sighs of politicians,
and the crackling static
of the sherriff’s radio
when no one is near,
you will find him.
He is the root, the marrow,
the gradient, the placement,
the opening, the silence,
the waiting, the landing,
and the ending.
They say that once he was a man,
but I think that was just for an instant–
one still frame of an ever-moving picture.
Sometimes we wonder,
what really happened?
Then the thought arrives, Be patient,
how could we know that if whatever it was
has only just begun…?
II
If you want to inhabit
a world of Love,
I think you must
be willing to receive
every single experience
encounter
premonition
sensation
movement
color
thrown knife
and shot bullet
at the door of your existence
with both hands open
as if receiving
sealed correspondence
from the Master
down the street,
where the words
“I love you”
are etched in gold foil–
albeit sometimes
offered in a
very strange
language
indeed.
Embracing Forever 