Light One . . .

Light one candle or as many as you like, it doesn't matter -
the flame will be the same anyway, with each it burns
more or less alike, but it burns.

Let it be slender and elegant, or plain, or ostentatious,
let it be tiny on a birthday cake, let it be round and massive,
or short and plump: but when I light the tea-candles to my Puja

I see that every flame is one.
If a flame is poor or dirty or foul,
either the surrounding air is bad or the candle sucks.
 
Just so is the soul,
and just so is the essence of any religion:
if that religion is understood to be a bond
between a soul and it's origin in this present incarnation.

Soul is just soul, and a flame is also just that.
I have never joined a religion, so can I never leave one;
and the one I was born into I needn't reject,

yet no religion can make me it's member
if that excludes me from any other,
as my faith knows and embraces all faiths.

The Bhakti Path or the Path of Sufis
has no members, and no membership,
so can neither be joined nor left.

Like the prodigal son who returns, begging
his father: "take me back!"
and Dad says, "oh get off it, when were you ever 'not mine'!"

Two flames meeting or a hundred flames,
a matchstick or a bonfire – and there are great-souls
and there are deeply underdeveloped ones.

Flame is one, soul is one, religion is one,
lovingkindness is one, beauty is one, Being is one -
all else is the scenery of incarnations.