Mad As a Hatter

“Have I gone mad?”
The Hatter asks.
“I’m afraid so,”
Alice replies.
“You’re entirely
bonkers.
But I’ll tell you
a secret.
All the best
people are.”

I’ll tell you
a secret,
but first
let’s examine
your theology.

Does it have
room for a
Wonderland,
where “slithy toves
gyre and gimble
in the wabe?”

And you can
“rest awhile
by the Tumtum tree,
lost in uffish thought?”

Or have all
the rabbit holes
into The Mystery
been shovelled full of
deep and serious
thoughts,

meditations and
invocations and
incantations
meant to be
pondered,
imagination
squandered on
the fear of
missing out
by virtue of
a surfeit of
lightheartedness?

I promised you
a secret, and
Lewis Carroll
knew it:

Unless your
theology, your
philosophy, your
cosmology,
are free of the
hegemony of
ruthless Reason,

you have yet
to unearth the
treasure of
Who You Really Are.

(Photo by Bert Ferranco; UnSplash)

 

Laughing Ferocity

I used to believe that
I was the offspring
of creatures
made from dirt by
a distant
I Am.

That after my
three-score-and-ten,
dirt would return to
dirt, but, if I
said the Magic Mantras
of Blind Belief,

my Soul,
whatever that is,
would escape
the dirt and
ascend to a
gold-plated
Paradise,

narrowly escaping
the burning quicksand of
Dante’s Inferno.

But the bad dream
is receding,
swallowed up by that
nightmare quicksand.

Instead, I’ve wandered
into a Holy Land
created when
I Am
burst into an Infinitude of
I Ams,
of which
You and I and All
are One.

The thing is,
when I Am
greets I Am,
All That Is,
All that can
possibly be,

is a bloomfest
of adoration
that will blow your
Holy Hair back
with its laughing
ferocity.

(Photo by Ben White; UnSplash)

 

Forgive the Sermon

Forgive the sermon,
but it’s Sunday Morning and
old habits
die hard.

Open your Bibles, or
swipe your
screens, to the
Parable of The Prodigal.

The Tale of
The Selfish One
who grabbed
what was his,
what was owed him,
what served him,

then severed
the ties to his
father, benevolent
Giver of Gifts.

In a far-off place
the boy is soon
bereft,
besmirched,
besieged.

He flees
homeward,
hoping
the judgment and
sentence for his
foolishness
will be bearable.

He’s prepared for the
presumption of
penitence.

Meanwhile
the Father is
hiring the
dancers, the
musicians, the
caterers.

His glee is
gathering steam.

Soon it will
overflow and
Merriment
will laugh at the
mention of
moderation.

All he ever wanted
was for
his boy to
come home.

At last it’s
Father’s Day.

 

Waltzing With Outlaws

I confess
I Am
obsessed with
The Mystery of
The Moment,

and I must
choose whether
to greet it with
the Love of a
creator
made in the Image of
The Creator,

or with
the constraint
that comes when
obsession surrenders to
Fear.

Fear creeps
into The Mystery
armed with
doctrines and
disciplines,

while Love
gambols and gambles
that Freedom
will lead to
leaping
Imagination

that embraces
The Mystery
like a lover
enamored with
the Unknown,

the romance
of the wry and
ridiculous,

the wisdom of
the absurd,
the melody of
the melancholy,

the lust for
learning the
alphabets of
mercy,
the language of
emphatic empathy,
the rhythm of
kinetic kindness.

Before you try to sneak
your strictures into the
Dance of The Mystery,
you should know
that She’s partial to
waltzing with
Outlaws.

(Photo by Aditya Ali; UnSplash)

 

First Degree Felonious Notion

It’s Sunday Morning and
I’m reminded that
I’ve never fully
recovered from the
First Degree Felonious Notion
that the Holy Water
in the Sacramental Font

is somehow different
from the drops
catching
the sunlight
as they fall from
the gutter
into the puddle
where a sparrow is
bathing,

before the puddle
vanishes
back to the heavens
from whence it
fell into the
Ocean.

The poet, Rumi,
said we are
as those drops
in the Ocean
of the Divine,
each Beloved
Drop containing
the Ocean,

but some
prevaricating
priests want
you to believe
the droplet sliding down
that tankard of stout, or
the ones streaming
from the showerheads
in that Shelter for
the Hapless,

are eternally
separate from
their kin in
the Holy Font.

(Photo by Navi; UnSplash)

 

A Single Joke

You can build your
Fastidious Edifice
of True Belief,
professional precision
in every measured
right angle and
strident straight line,
rejoicing in your
righteous rigor.

Recruit your
awestruck adherents,
proud to profess
their allegiance to
the Code of Conduct
required of recruits.

But I am in
Wonder of
the Wanderers
who stride to
the microphone and,
with a single
Joke,

tumble the Edifice
to smithereens,
leaving the listeners
in Love with
what remains,

their hallowed
precious Selves,
which always survive
the tumbling.

Perhaps the Truest
High Priests are
The Jesters,
who heal the Hallowed
with Laughs.

(Photo by Nathan Anderson; UnSplash)

 

Why On Earth?

I do my best
to abstain from
the ligatures
of Religion

when I choose
whether to listen to
David Byrne or
The Neville Brothers,
whether to watch
my favorite
Brit detective series or
that George Carlin documentary,
whether to make
pizza or burritos tonight,
whether to day trip
to hike Mt. Walker or
night trip to
the Spotted Cat,
on Frenchmen Street,
on a retreat to
New Orleans.

No priests or
holy books
are consulted when
I choose what fiction
I’ll take with me to
Better Living Through Coffee,
the better to read my way
into The Mystery.

Why on earth,
when The Mystery
tells the bouncer
to let me in,
would I imagine
the thing to do is
get Religion?

(Photo by Andrew Seaman; UnSplash)

 

Art Show

The Mystery
invites you to
exhibit your best
work in an
Art Show,

the theme of which
is Love,
but that’s so
amorphous
as to be all but
meaningless,

until we see
what you’ve
done with it.

You,
with all that
inventive prowess
prodding you to
astonish us
with your bold
beneficence.

We relish the
thought of being
ravished
by your
song and dance, your
brush strokes, your
wowest witticisms, your
elaborate machines, your
over-the-top dramatics.

I should make it clear:
there are no judges,
no award ceremonies,
because this thing
goes on forever,
worlds without end,
just like You.

The Mystery
is calling it
The Big Bang.

(Photo by Amelia Bartlett; UnSplash)

 

Here

If you are reading
this,
you are AWARE of
this word.
The one right

HERE.

That Awareness
is where
your Soul abides,
at least for
a moment,
until that moment
is taken hostage
by the recollection
that you’re
seventy-two
and you still haven’t
finished your
novel,
and that young guy
in the paper
just published his
tenth.

Go back

HERE.

Just for a moment,
until you’re kidnapped
by guilt
that your tax return
is past due.

Go back

HERE.

It’s your
Interface with
The Mystery,

where your
citizenship lies,
where nobody is
the least bit interested in
your age,

where the words for
a thousand novels
are smiling
seductively
at You.

Go back

HERE.

(Photo by Flavia Gava; UnSplash)