FOOWpoems

These snipets of verse were compiled to be the introduction to Part Three of The Camerado
Chronicles,which of course never came to be. Each of these diverse selections speaks in its own
way to the exploration of Metatheology through the centuries, and this is only the very tippiest
tip of the iceberg when it comes to the great wealth of poetic insight on the subject. In fact, it is
safe to say that Metatheology cannot be expressed through human language without using poetry.

As you read them, try not to focus on the words themselves and their significance to your
intellect; seek instead that little voice inside you saying "AHA!" and "YEAH!!" and
"YOU GO ______ (insert poet's name here)!!!" This is how metatheological truth is
conveyed.--HC

“Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God in each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass;
I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God’s
name,
And I leave them where they are,
for I know that others will punctually come forever and ever.

And as to you death, and you bitter hug of mortality…it is idle to try to alarm me.”

--Walt Whitman
from “Song of Myself”

“I put the popular question to him (William Blake) concerning
the imputed divinity of Jesus Christ. He answered:
‘He is the only God’ –but then he added—
‘And so am I and so are you.’”

--Henry Crabb Robinson

“Once Chaung-tzu dreamt that he was a butterfly,
fluttering around, happy with himself and absolutely carefree.
He didn’t know he was Chuang-tzu.
Suddenly he woke up:
there he was in the flesh, unmistakably Chuang-tzu.
But he didn’t know if he was Chuang-tzu who had just dreamt that he was a butterfly,
or a butterfly now dreaming that he was Chuang-tzu.”

--Chuang-tzu

WHY MIRA CAN’T GO BACK TO HER OLD HOUSE
The colors of the Dark One have penetrated Mira’s body; all the other colors washed out.
Making love with the Dark One and eating little, those are my pearls and my carnelians.
Meditation beads and the forehead streak, those are my scarves and rings.
That’s enough feminine wiles for me. My teacher taught me this.
Approve me or disapprove me: I praise the Mountain Energy night and day.
I take the path that ecstatic human beings have taken for centuries.
I don’t steal money, I don’t hit anyone. What will you charge me with?
I have felt the swaying of the elephant’s shoulders;
and now you want me to climb on a jackass? Try to be serious.

--Mirabai

“Knowing that man is not justified by the works of the law,
but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ,
that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law:
for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified…
For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.
I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me:
and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God,
who loved me, and gave himself for me.
I do not frustrate the grace of God:
for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.”

--Paul of Tarsus
from “The Epistle to the Galatians”

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.”

--Rumi

“God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you:
beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

--Rainer Maria Rilke

“But you who are so happy here,
tell me:do you aspire to a more
profound insight, or a greater
ecstasy?”

She smiled a little, as did the
shades beside her; then
answered with such gladness that
her whole being seemed to glow
with love’s first fire:

“Brother, God’s generosity itself
calms our will, and makes us
want no more than what we have,
and long for nothing else.

If we desired any greater bliss,
we would not be in harmony with
Him whose love assigns us to a
lower place.

The essence of this joy is that we
all have given up our personal
desires so that our will is merged
with God’s own will.

Therefore our rank in heaven, from
height to height, is just as dear to
each particular soul as to the
Master who appointed it.

In His will is our peace: it is the
sea into which all currents and all
streams empty themselves, for all
eternity.”

--Dante Alighieri

“And when they were come to the
multitude, there came to him a certain
man, kneeling down to him, and saying,

Lord, have mercy on my son: for he is
lunatic, and sore vexed: for oft times he
falleth into the fire, and oft into the
water.

And I brought him to thy disciples, and
they could not cure him.

Then Jesus answered and said, “O
faithless and perverse generation, how
long shall I be with you? How long
shall I suffer you? Bring him hither to
me.”

And Jesus rebuked the devil; and he
departed out of him: and the child was
cured from that very hour.

Then came the disciples to Jesus
apart, and said, why could we not cast
him out?

And Jesus said unto them, “Because
of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you,
if ye have faith as a grain of mustard
seed, ye shall say unto this mountain,
Remove hence to yonder place; and it
shall remove; and nothing shall be
impossible unto you.

Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by
prayer and fasting.”

--from “The Gospel of Matthew”

“Creatures rise, creatures vanish;
I alone am real, Arjuna,
looking out, amused, from deep
within the eyes of every creature.

I am the object of all knowledge,
father of the world, its mother,
source of all things, of impure and
pure, of holiness and horror.

I am the goal, the root, the witness,
home and refuge, dearest friend,
creation and annihilation,
everlasting seed and treasure.

I am the radiance of the sun, I
open or withhold the rainclouds,
I am immortality and death,
am being and non-being.

I am the Self, Arjuna, seated
in the heart of every creature.
I am the origin, the middle,
and the end that all must come to.

Those who worship me sincerely
with their minds and bodies, giving
up their whole lives in devotion,
find in me their heart’s fulfillment.

-- from The Bhagavad-Gita

“We awaken in Christ’s body
as Christ awakens our bodies,
and my poor hand is Christ, He enters
my foot, and is infinitely me.

I move my hand, and wonderfully
my hand becomes Christ, becomes all of
Him
(for God is indivisibly
whole, seamless in His Godhood).

I move my foot, and at once
He appears like a flash of lightning.
Do my words seem blasphemous? –Then
open your heart to Him

and let yourself receive the one
who is opening to you so deeply.
For if we genuinely love Him,
we wake up inside Christ’s body

where all our body, all over,
every most hidden part of it,
is realized in joy as Him,
and He makes us, utterly, real,

and everything that is hurt, everything
that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,
maimed, ugly, irreparably
damaged, is in Him transformed

and recognized as whole, as lovely,
as radiant in His light
we awaken as the Beloved
in every last part of our body.

--Symeon the New Theologian

METAPHYSICIS

Just as the butterfly destroys its home
when God has perfected its delicate wings,

so will true worship take flight
when you are finally ready to burst through
the cocoon of your own beliefs.

--Hermit Crab

(Most of the selections come from The Enlightened Mind: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry, edited
by Stephen Mitchell. Two come from the King James Bible. One doesn’t come from anywhere.)

“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.”
--Emily Dickinson