Tag: deities

Laughter of the gods

Published on June 14, 2005

If you would hear the gods gambol and laugh,
their rumbling chuckles echo through the land,
and tickle divine humor, pick a path
based on a well-conceived and thought out plan.

You need not start out on it. Not one bit
of progress is required, so long as all
your fervent hopes and dreams are tied to it
in theory. Say, for instance, in the fall

you’d hoped to fix the house up, rearrange
the furniture, or patch the bathroom tile.
No great ambition, nothing wild or strange;
yet at the gods’ lips, a slow grinning smile

begins to form the moment you believe
the universe and you have found accord,
that fate and karma have dealt you reprieve
against those good deeds done, so long ignored.

With busyness you occupy your mind,
engaging one idea after the next,
until a peaceful moment, when you find
a chance to just relax and to reflect,

and there, under the silence, you can hear
the stifled guffaw of the universe;
then, suddenly, the truth becomes so clear:
you either laugh, as well, or things get worse.

14 JUN 2005

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Take heart, ye wayworn pilgrims

Published on May 10, 2005

Take heart, ye wayworn pilgrims
on the road to finding out,
who’ve braved the elements of fear,
delusion, pride and doubt,
and found on your long journey
not a sole epiphany
except that destinations often
are illusory.

Take heart, ye lovesick paramours
who thirst for the divine,
whose knees are raw from crawling
through the realm of Proserpine;
what horrors in the realm of Death
you’ve suffered for your lust
are merely shadows, palimpsest
that will crumble to dust.

Take heart, ye hopeless wanderers
who think there is no trail
and have forsaken long ago
some great quest for the Grail.
The cup is in your hands already;
Drink, and have your fill.
If you can’t find it there by now,
you likely never will.

10 May 2005

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Gratitude

Published on April 28, 2005

Thank you for not giving me
the Powerball numbers from the astral plane;
for postponing that move to the Florida Keys
at least another decade;
for the psoriasis that precluded my career
as a playboy Lothario;
for the hesitation, that lack of killer instinct,
that limited my musical ambitions;
for my overdrawn bank account,
for the grey hair on my head,
for the gumption to quit college,
for the brain cells I’ve lost to self-medication,
for the little things.

Thank for the bathroom walls
rotting into disgusting flakes;
for the vinyl siding hanging down
against the untrimmed rose and jasmine bushes,
for the neighborhood watch that always reports
when my lawn misses a week’s worth of trimming.

Thank you for a self-centered teenage child
with a hand full of gimme, and a mouth full of much obliged
(although, truth be told, not too often with the thank you);
thanks for senior year expenses:
cap and gown
announcements
college applications
senior portraits
prom gowns
car insurance
cell phones

Thanks for all those unwelcome comparisons to other parents,
who obviously have their act together,
and know how to understand and respect
the needs of hypochondriac, selfish shopaholic children
who can’t be bothered to clean their own dishes,
cook their own food,
or even pick up the bath mat after themselves.

Thank you for these extra hundred pounds
that make me much more difficult to lug around
all this gratitude and appreciation.

Thanks for long hours, high standards of living,
neighbors that vote Republican and think they’re doing the right thing,
and will debate me,
like the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons,
that society is to blame.

Thanks for the patriarchy, and for right-wing conservatives
that help me keep in perspective my own radically different value system.
Thanks for the 78% of Americans that call themselves Christians,
but act anything but. It helps me with my own hypocrisies.

Thanks for being there, even when you’re not there.
Thanks for the dawn, and for twilight, and the hours in between.

Thanks for all those payroll deductions that represent money
I’ll owe to the IRS anyway.
Thanks for credit card interest, for installment loans, for insurance premiums.
They help me keep it real.

Thanks especially for those big, flying cockroaches.
Killing them gives me some fleeting sense of power.

Thanks for keeping the sources of my inheritance alive
but not making me resent them for it.

Thanks for nothing. Thanks for everything.

I don’t say it often enough.

28 APR 2005

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Galileo

Published on April 5, 2005

The stars are fixed; they do not move.
Instead, what we call firmament
is just a shifting lens that’s bent
to suit the seasons. To approve
or disapprove such things is vain
and futile; our whole history,
that we would carve in stone and brick,
is but a wisp, a palimpsest,
that the next epoch writes anew.

And gods, if such are said to be,
perhaps employ more lasting inks
yet too will fade to faint indents
and leave no greater marks than men.

What once was center is now freed
and to circumference lays the lie;
great spheres of thought that wise men hold
more dear than life itself, deflate.

So what of fate, no more ordained
and best left to the seer’s glass?
What purpose do those notions serve
that would enslave the yearning mind?

We are in motion without end;
there is no point at which, full-stop,
the world could even for an hour
reflect upon its then-new state
so that an unseen force could smile
and praise his finished handiwork.

The stars are fixed; they do not move.
Instead, we hurl through space and time
in some eternal dance of life;
and no stiff doctrine made of men
has power to change the truth of it,
nor outraged, claim as heresy
what they, while blind, deny my eye.

05 APR 2005

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The Food (for Thought) of the Gods

Published on January 10, 2005

Who decides what lives, what dies,
based on more than the needs of some,
but on what is best for the entire world
so balance can be maintained?

Who thinks they have the right to choose
that some should flourish while others fail,
that their kind is much more essential
and so deserves more space, more food?

The gods of course.

For only the gods act out of concern
for the whole; their own interests are not part
in any way of the actions made.

The point is this:

if you benefit in any way from a decision
to kill or not to kill today;
if you gain more ground, or food, or power
by taking others’ things away,
you’re not a god.

This is not your dominion.
You are not the most auspiciously born.
You are only a small part of the whole.

And if you act as if you’re a god,
without that knowledge,
you will only result in destroying everything.

You will fail.

And you will find excuses for your failure,
like “man is a fallen creature,
bound by sin to make mistakes”
because you don’t really think so —
you think man is a god,
and that the world just doesn’t work right.

Well, it just doesn’t work the way you think it does.

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In my inbox this morning

Published on December 26, 2004

(edited slightly for content and privacy)
Hey:

I like you train of thought. I was in church this christmas eve to see my little girl in a play. I heard the preacher talk about Jesus (you know the one from Nazereth), being the “Prince of peace”. I thought you know this just dosen’t seem right. I mean all throughout history people, mainly governments have used his name to cause suffering, misery and conflicts all over the world. I wonder what he would think about that?

Any way, I thought of creating an orgainization called x For the purpose of promoting peace worldwide. Not a religious organization. God is Good Religion is Evil pretty much sums up my religious beliefs.

I have some really good ideas on how to make the organization grow exponentially and really making a differance. Would you be interested in working with me in this endeavor?

(and here’s my response, again slightly edited)

Dear x:

While I am flattered that you think my participation in any organization devoted to the purpose of world peace might be useful, I am sorry I must decline. At this point in my life, I feel that organizations really make little difference if the individuals who comprise them have not “made their peace” with themselves and their immediate surroundings first. After all, of what good is a hypocrite who attends peace rallies and then goes home and grumbles about how loud his neighbor’s stereo is, or yells at his dog? I think you get the point. All the organizations in the world will not do what is required, which is to change each single mind, one at a time? What that requires is that each individual who is interested in peace act peacefully — and from that small ripple in the pond, echoes emanate endlessly to all shores. That is the exponential growth that is needed, I think. To start with an organization, no matter how noble its intentions, that does not have as its core that basic belief — that individuals, not organizations, make the difference, is to pursue the wrong means, at least for me. And the means must justify the ends — after all, they define it if, as in my life, the journey, not the destination, is the whole point of existence.

As for the Prince of Peace … I have often wondered why such a prince would require such an extensive army. That seems to defeat the purpose. After all, peace-keeping is NOT peace-making. It is only punishing hatred with the threat of reciprocal, impassionate violence. And THAT surely is not Peace.

Thank you again for your kind words. I wish you well in your endeavors.

Happy Holidays.

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Mother Father Breathing

Published on December 22, 2004

With each breath, opposites are reconciled:
like the unconscious seeping under the door
that the river makes as it rises during the night,
then at first light ebbs slowly away
as the sun’s heat pulls it into its glowing bosom.

To dub the inhalation Da, to sense its quiet strength,
then name it Ma as it comes forth from the lungs,
its motion merged with infinite atmosphere,
warm tendrils seeking out atom by atom
the molecules that shape the space,
flesh out the illusions of matter
and the world’s wide mask of being and nothing,
is to lower a string into a lake
and think you’ve split the water.

There is a moment, between sighs,
where there is only one expanse of air,
samadhi in a pregnant pause;
and in that instant what divides
a flame from its penchance to burn
becomes the only line between
the different forms of god.

22 DEC 2004

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