Currently Considering

There was a time stretching over most all of Human history, that electricity as a scientifically conceivable and verifiable phenomenon, just waited to be discovered, named, harnessed, applied.

During this time, common religion was not permitted to push the envelope in mutual appreciation together with the sciences, but was consigned to remain enveloped in traditions of custom, superstition, ritual and manipulation.

Today we are fortunate to know and embrace science and the blessings of advanced discovery.  Science however, takes the place of “Old Religion” when it becomes itself enveloped in self-serving dogma.

If before the Modern Age you’d approached anyone with the idea that a cable plug placed in a socket would draw an unlimited current of electric energy, so powerful it could either kill in an instant or power everything in your domicile – you’d have been avoided, outcast, maybe pilloried or worse.

How many, considering themselves religious or not, agnostic or atheistic or indifferent – how many now, today, would consider taking the plug of their own original potential and with sincere childlike interest, trust, devotion or love, placing that into the socket igniting the current of God’s presence, love and grace?

Just as electricity can be known without ever being explained or explainable – so is God’s current just waiting to be discovered.

 

A Personal Prayer for the Times

O my Noble Lord and Cherisher!

Preserve my sincerity, restore my dignity,

increase my faith, and make me fearless.

Bless me with the grace

to rightly perceive, firmly confront,

and compassionately creatively constructively

prevail over all forms of tyranny and aggression and abuse,

whenever and wherever I am witness to it,

in defense of the defenseless, the innocent, and the truth.

Amen.

Gopi Crones Awakened

I have been

from time to time

Govinda

to women of advanced years,

or hardly advanced but feeling so;

reminding them with a glance,

a tone, a touch, a kiss –

that they are ever young

and beautiful, brimming

with the fullness of love.

Seeing themselves as homely

I see they’re merely lonely –

looking at their own reflections

using the eyes of this world as a mirror.

I tell them gently, and with conviction,

with the fragrance of that Garden

on my breath:

use me for a mirror, take my eyes

and look again.

I counter “ugly” with snugly, I counter

“Look at my face, it’s old, worn, used-up,”

with

“Not a trace, it’s mature and experienced,

and what’s more,

light is there, and power, and grace –

how erotic is this face!”

The Gopi is awakened in so many forms.

A Child's Book of Grace and Blessings

(Summer of 1982, Longmont CO: it all came to me while taking a bath one afternoon, after work at a doughnut shop - all of it, in that bathtub, the whole draft in one shock hit. ... the cat came much later of course.)

 Sometimes God gets lonely too -
That's why He created you.

God is mercy, God is sweet -
I count my blessings as I eat. (I)

God is mercy, God is sweet -
I count my blessings as I eat. (II) 

God is beauty, God is light -
How I thank Him for my sight.

God is dear, and always near -
If I listen I will hear.

Toward all His creatures He is kind -
I'll copy Him toward all I find.

God is here, and also there - 
Makes it easier to share.

God is great, and God is small - 

No one owns 'im (He belongs to all).

He lives and loves through everybody - 
(I sing to Him while on the potty).

He's always where I wish to go - 
He gets there first - how does He know!

He's not a "man" an' not a "lady" - 
Unless I make 'im to be ...
Always watching what I do,
He's deep inside of me.

I am His, and you are too - 
He cherishes both me and you.

The Friend who never goes away, 
I sing for Him each night and day -
I'm proud of HIm without a doubt,
He knows my feelings inside-out.

His laughter fills me when I play -

And He never, ever missed my birthday!

Puja-Mausi cannot read this, I suppose - 
But then, she doesn't need to, for she knows.

What Is Being Looked At Is What Is Looking (Assisi-Frank)

(mid- to late-'80s)
Heart of human being accomodates all longing
and all deviations from longing.
Put aside the literature of ages,
go and feel the pulsation of the heart
transcending all ages
transcending all places
spanning vast ranges of the sane and the grotesque.

Every self is born believing,
every belief a longing to know the Self.
I have tasted a mother's salty tears
watching her child being dragged to the auction block,
herself led helplessly away to be probed and raped.
And the man clutching gut and groin
from kicks administered by smiling guards
watched his wife and oft-held children ushered into
the extermination wagon
while his mother entered a barracks with a crude and leering officer –
I was that man
long ago shattered and alone.

For all this human heart has travailed
yet this mind is free;
like the unnamed unheard-of sisters of faith
who braved every terror and abuse to succor the will-broken
children in the maelstrom,
for the sake of the love they carried in their own wounded bodies.

I have been shown in dream "the balm to heal the suffering masses"...




The Names of God will clear of all fantasy
that mind which seeks refuge in the stillness of the Self
residing in all;
residing even in that one holding the whip and the goad,
even the pimp and the cocaine boss,
the magistrate and the power-broker,
the drinking wife-masher or the barb-tongued wife,
the abuse offender and those in positions who give him cover,
yes, even the landlord,
evenso the child in my arms, as they all once were, reflecting

my Original Innocence.

Free of lust – through hard work;
free of greed and of anger – through hard work;
free of all rambling judgement idiocy by dull self-conscious mind;
free of religious arrogance and the effort of manipulation –
through hard work and through
Surrender's grace-bestowing power.

The heart which harbors layered knots of pain, horror, cheapened existence,
and the heart which holds to childish naive optimism –
both house the Self without even knowing it.
The heart which cares for neither pleasure nor pain
just sings the Beloved Name
is the very temple of that Self.

 
There is no dignity like Original Innocence,
no persuasion so subtle, so sovereign,
no generosity so free, genuine, fair.
One who's found it has a clear and forgiving mind,
a mind which can span the ages
and touch hearts in all times in all worlds –
and clean up any life which has just enough glimmer left
to remember what it once knew.

Practice is remembrance.
Kindness is remembrance.
Sincerity and integrity are remembrance,
all this is certain.
Original Innocence is reborn by turning;
this turning is begun and completed
through an act of surrender.
And with us the Guru has left this Principle for all time.

Benediction

In the Name of the sacred chain of Illuminated Souls
who hold together the worlds:
May the Living God be with you now and always -
here-now and in reality, as in eternity.
May He, your Noble Lord and Cherisher, preserve your sincerity,
restore your dignity, increase your faith,
and make you fearless.
May the power of His Name abide with you.
May your joy be full and gratitude be your portion.
May you be moved and guided to find and assert
your inborn sovereign dignity and power,
your inborn sovereign confidence and grace.
And may His light ever shine within your heart,
even as you shine within mine.
Amen.

Grace

(Parable out of the mid-1980s)

Two monks traveling in company together came by a loaf of dry bread which they divided between themselves.  Not having eaten for days, it was a welcome pittance.  The first monk gave thanks profusely, while the second uttered nothing, preparing enthusiastically to consume his portion of the find. Familiar with the latter's insufferable bent toward bypassing devotions, the conscientiously pious monk prayed all the more fervently for both of them the customary table-grace.

While thus engaged, eyes tightly drawn, jaw firmly set, with hands clasped in emphatic rightousness, he could not have noticed the stranger passing by.  His incorrigably undisciplined brother, on the other hand, judging the visitor's condition to look much worse for wear than either of theirs, calmly and without hesitation or thought, gave his share of the catch to the stranger, and this with a nod and finger to his lips, so as not to distract his companion's devotions.

The stranger disappeared quietly and grace continued uninterrupted.  Since this simple monk failed to mention the incident entirely, his companion in the Order had to assume, as usual, that his holy brother had once again thoughtlessly gone and devoured his half during the grace.

Khadija

Mother of orphans, refuge of women denied their nobility,

had Mary herself been dressed in Arab finery

she'd not have been more merciful.

A widow's wealth more measured in heart than coin or cravans -

God's grace in her! she slept with the troubles of others

in the confort of her house mending broken lives.

Noble Khadija, jewel of Mecca! in your arms

you cradled even him your spouse,

the master of a great legacy.

Bearing the unbearable for his sake, at his side, mirror of his soul -

he carried in himself the destiny of a great people

as you carried in yourself the weight of his own.

Khadija!  I hear you within,

Kha . . . rising straight and forceful, piller of strength;

Dij . . . diving into the very depths of love;

and Ah . . . bearing up joy and favor for those who have none.

Khadija!  Mother of potential wealth, satisfier of need,

God's gift to a man who was a gift to the world.

Khadija the Great, rarely heard of,

But known, known well in the hearts of those who recognize

what a miracle is womankind.

S. Inayat-Chisti, July 1986

Cornerstone of Your Faith

Gratitude gives latitude when attitude allows you

                                                                 to nurture Space -

Taking this deeply to Heart, you let it impart
                                                           life-bestowing Grace.

There is a well, easy to stand in, I have been there;

its waters are deep, they carry an atmosphere
                                                          like no other.

It is the Heart-Source of the Prophet, he told me so,

that late-summer night in a field west of al-Quds:

SING! Bismillah ir-rahman ir-rahim!

SING! In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Beloved!

This is the very Cornerstone of Qur'an!

This, he said, "the Balm for the Arab masses," the antidote

to every vain pride, to all bigotry, to male aggression -

ir-rahman ir-rahim, compassionate, merciful -

whose shared root means Womb:
                                     that should tell us something.

If you don't yet know "In the Name of God,
                                     the Compassionate, the Merciful" -

to which you pay cynical lip-service
                                                       and reject its Guidance -

then you are not yet ready for "Allahu-akbar,"
                                                                God is Most Great -

which you use as a bludgeon out of primitive motives

rather than a sword to cut through your ignorance.

You reject the Balm vouchsafed from the
                                                            Prophet's own breast,

embracing instead that Bomb strapped to your own chest,

as you enter the crowd in the marketplace.

BREATHE "In the Name of God,
   Most Gracious, Most Merciful," with every step you take!

WALK "Bismillah ir-rahman ir-rahim,"
                                                  with every breath you draw!

Let it fill your atmosphere - give,
                                              abandon yourself to it utterly -

after all, God knows, it is your own true nature.

Let it carry you beyond hope and fear into certainty

                                             as no ideology can ever impart;

let it deliver you of your devisive judgemental loathing,
arrogant piety, with a Lovingkindness which opens
all doors and quietly overwhelms the world before you!

I see you on the street, self-isolated in your narrow-minded
     macho pride, your cherished anger worn on your sleeve -

                           "in the Name of God," you say,
               "the Compassionate, the Merciful" - as you butcher
     your own sister for wanting to determine her own life!
or you shoot her in the face, abetted by the family,
to uphold an "honor" which the Prophet
                                                       would find truly puzzling!

A twisted blasphemy this,
                       using the Cornerstone of the Faith to justify
                     political and every other self-serving agenda!

Behold:  when a wicked tribe rejected
   the Prophet's Message, scorned him and drove him out,
                                              scattering thorns in his path,

he recited only "Bism'illah ir-rahman ir-rahim"
                                                   with each prick and insult -

now it is you who scatter the thorns before the Prophet

by rejecting the Compassionate, the Merciful in favor
of cloying self-pity, of internecine blood-letting,
               and of ideological tyranny.

Whenever Religion becomes the property of bigotry,

whenever Faith is measured in fanatical scorn -

there is the Muslim Islam's own worst enemy,

there are the prophets stoned in the square.

SAY:  In the Name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful,
           and mean it, learn to be grateful for your existence!

SING:  Bism'illah ir-rahman ir-rahim, and behold the simple
          everyday glory of God's own deft Hand
       working through you, blessing and cherishing you,
               and the ground you walk on!

You want honor?  Then always honor the One Self in all.

You want influence?  Good, then don't ever
                                    take your next breath for granted.

Remembering God for His own sake
           relieves you of poverty-mind:  always let
   the majesty and dignity of your Noble Lord and Cherisher
 overwhelm you, and join it - acknowledging, after all,

                                         that He dwells within you as you.

Go now, and make yourself a fragrant gift to the world,

a reflection of Paradise Here and Now, and in Reality.

- S. Inayat-Chisti, Berlin, Nov. 2005