Maintenance

Your Life
has its tasks,
no doubt:
clean, fix, repair,
restore, rebuild,
re-do from scratch.

Let’s call it
Maintenance.

When You can
squeeze it in –
perhaps between
clean and rebuild –
You may Love to
Create

with brush or
carving knife,
Storyteller’s
pen or keyboard,
ballet slippers or
strings stretched taut
over frets or
keys in black and white,
velvet voice or
playwright’s
downstage dialogue.

Let’s call it
Creation.

What if You
came here
to Create
and You’ve been
sidetracked by
Maintenance?

Or, perhaps
You’ve learned to
turn Maintenance
into Art.

(Photo by Jan Kopriva; UnSplash)

 

The Mystery

Suppose You
spent years
assembling a Library,
built of Beliefs
from Advaita to
Zoroastrianism,

each volume
the apex of
Authority,
built of centuries
of careful
examination and assembly,
using only those pages
approved by
scholars and soothsayers
selected for their
Acumen of the Absolute.

What if You
had a dream
in which
an invisible hand
placed a single
Book
beneath Your pillow
as You slept,
and
in the morning,
when You
opened the Book,
it was Empty,

except for a single
instruction,
printed across
the inside cover,
which read:

“Close this book,
lay it flat in
the palm of
Your hand, and
raise it to
eye-level.

Look across it and
beyond.
Know that
Whatever You see
contains more
Mystery

than can ever be
known
by even the most
careful study
of every volume
in Your Library
of Beliefs.”

(Photo by Janko Ferlic; UnSplash)

 

Parking Lot Rhapsody

I just got back
from Church
on wheels,

where the choir
was a playlist of
Indie Rock,
“Slow Dances,” by the
beatific youngsters
who call themselves
Winnetka Bowling League,

every bit as holy as
a Tabernacle Choir
in a sanctified
House built of
polished pews and
soaring ceilings,

except now I’m
in the grocer’s,
where the aisles
teem with
glorified faces
glowing with
the image of
their Maker’s
adoring, soaring
Love of every
hair on their heads.
I try not to stare

but I’m astonished
that driving home
the only thing
in my heart is
a rhapsody that
began in the
parking lot
at Safeway.

(Photo by Renate Vanaga; UnSplash)

 

Conundrum

Does Your Cosmology
allow a Mystery,
a Conundrum
surrounding
the Origin of
All That Is?

Have You spun
a Story,
a Narrative,
with an Artisan
whose Art
is made of the same
immodest
Love
that forms
The Art of
every Artist
who daydreams
The Mystery into
What Is Real?

Consider this:

Does the Artist
imagine Her Art
to Be an Object
to invite
Judgment?

Does the Artist
conjure His Art
to Be the Subject of
Penalty?

Or does Our
Cosmic Artist
forever expand the
Eternal Affection and
Infinite Curiosity

that Loved
Their Art into
Being from
The Beginning?

(Photo by Melissa Mjoen; UnSplash)

 

Bamboozled

It’s likely
You’ve been bamboozled,
though it’s likely
the con artists
were well-intentioned.

They imagined You
to be a
blank canvas,

yearning to be
painted upon,

the galleries of
Your mind
and heart
hung with canvases
brushed with
the strokes of
others skilled for
such purposes.

If they,
and later,
You,
chose wisely,
perhaps the
inner galleries
are filled
with masterpieces,

especially if You
dedicated the fruits of
Your own work
to the hiring of
Masters.

But now You’ve
grown weary of
searching for Masters,
perhaps Your pockets
are empty.

What if You
dreamed
that You awakened,

and Your hands
were alive with
a Master’s touch,

that was there
all along,
waiting for You to
feel it?

Now You can paint
Your Masterpiece,

even if You’ve only
a handful of days
left to do it.

Wake up!
You’ve always been
the Master
You were
looking for.

(Photo by Filippo Andolfatto; UnSplash)

 

Dazzled

Standing in line
at the pharmacy,
my jaw slack,
poised to drop
any moment

at the beauty of
the moving gallery of
faces drifting by

in auras of
The Maker’s Art,
with beautiful brows and
curious eyes and a
photo gallery of
the angled variety of
noses and
an exhibition of
mouths and chins
that would grace
the ceiling of
a chapel.

And the gorgeous
wrinkles!

Sculpted by
an artist with
a commission from
The Divine.

I’m sorry if
You caught Me
staring at You,

but I shouldn’t be
apologizing
for being
dazzled by
Your Light.

(Photo by Bahram Bayat; UnSplash)

 

Multiple Personality Disorder

You may be
suffering from
undiagnosed
Multiple Personality Disorder.

The Hands of Light
that crafted You
were skilled in
the Arts of
unrestrained,
over-the-top,
delight-drunk Love.

You are formed of
flawless Soul,
ignited by a
pilot light of
brilliant adoration,
then dipped
in a fountain of
luminescent desire for
eye-popping adventure.

But,
by divine design,
You are coated
with Earth,
to make Your re-entry
to the Planet
without
spontaneous
combustion.

Then, somewhere
along the Path
You’ve been
dutifully hiking,

You’ve forgotten
that You’re formed of
jeweled lightning,
captured for just
a moment
in dust and rust and
occasional
sorrow.

But that’s not
the You that is
You.

Don’t turn from
the intruder,
embrace Them,
hold Them
close and dear.

They crave
Your touch.
Wrap Them in
laughter at
the Lie
that You’ve
ever been
more than
One.

 

Altered State

Do this for Me.
Please.
Get your phone,
jack in the earpods,
find a playlist
of whatever
wraps light
around your
beating heart.

Now crank it.
Trust Me.
Your ears can
take it.
Just for awhile.

Now walk
wherever Your
happy feet are
the happiest,
wherever You are
flung into an
altered state

that drips tears
from Your eyes
that honeybees
and hummingbirds
would hover
in line
for hours
to taste.

If You’re game,
try a couple of
walking dance moves,
Saturday Night Fever
on whatever
day of the week
this is.

That’s how the
Love
that tied Your
cells together
feels when They
feast Their eyes
on You.

(Photo by Ahmad Odeh; UnSplash)

 

Unauthorized Biographies

I wonder if
we pay too much attention to
unauthorized biographies of
the billowing clouds of

Love

that blow out of
The Mystery,
luminescent showers of
adoration and
Creation,
bathed in
The Light of
the Eternal Embrace of
All That Is.

Rows of books,
bold to pronounce
names …
“God,” for example …
eager to assign
“He,” occasionally “She,”
with no apparent
authority.

But the chapter
stuck in my craw
this church-going Sunday morning,
like an unexpected
pebble in my
chocolate eclair,

is a Missing Chapter:

The one where
God created
Laughter and
standup comics.

(Photo by Christian Buehner; UnSplash)

 

The Science of It

Put on Your
lab coat and
run this experiment:

Choose an object,
perhaps the cluster of
tulips Your
neighbor brought,
or
Your Persian
kitty pal
draped across
the back of
Your couch,
or
the watercolor
rendering of
a hummingbird
poised in flight,
or
The One
sitting
across from You,
immersed in Her
book about
gardening . . .

Now,
turn on an imaginary
hose made of
hollow dandelion stems and
connected to Your
beating heart,

but filled with
sweet Syrup de
Amor.

Start showering
the Object of
Your Attention.

Make it mushy and
maudlin and
mawkish and
even a little
melancholy.

Let it be
in your imagination
for the moment,
but pile it on,

shimmery and
sun-drenched and
startling in its
ferocity.

Now for
The Science
of it:

Where did it
come from,
this Gusher?

It’s a Mystery,
isn’t it?