Ananda Ma says, “God comes to us in the guise of suffering.”  Crowded ’round are those who wish to fill their heart with her.  “To be close to The Mother is all we want.”

She comes in our dreams, sleeping or waking, and tells us she is as close as a thought.  Comes when she is summoned.  Lives just beneath our skin.

Whether we find our true teachers in a momentary glance or a lifetime of service, in a book or in a cathedral, in a single gatha or a stupa, in Her eyes or His, it is an initiation greater than birth.

~~~

Mother Teresa said she saw the ill and dying as “Jesus in His distressing disguise.”  How dedicated the heart must be to catch its own reflection in another.

In India passing and departing many say “Namaste” acknowledging the divine in each other.

~~~

So many kind personifications, so many reasons to be thankful.

Genuflecting before a great ponderosa, or touching our forehead to the feet of a gratitude-soaked image of the formless, or covering our head before the first form, we continue our pilgrimage into a certain Oneness.

Some see this oneness in the eyes of their teacher; others catch a glimpse in a flickering candle or a grain of sand, in a breaking wave or a tear rolling down a child’s cheek.  Zen masters note it in the snap of a twig or the death of their mother.

In our longing is the irresistible draw toward the great satisfaction of devotion.  Devotion of greater consequence than any object of devotion.

~~~

Step after step, breath after breath, we are able to step
within each step, to find the breath within the breath, and
within that the sacred essence
just where Kabir said we would.

Stephen Levine is the bestselling author of A Gradual Awakening, Who Dies?, Meetings at the Edge, Healing into Life and Death, Guided Meditations, Embracing the Beloved, A Year to Live, Turning toward the Mystery, and Unattended Sorrow.  This poem comes from his new book, Breaking the Drought:  Visions of Grace, of which Roshi Joan Halifax writes, "This is a gorgeous book, a book of powerful images, experience, beauty, and wisdom.  Stephen Levine has always told the truth; now he does it with the great beauty of his poetry ringing in our hearts."

See also:
"This awkward speck of dust"
"There is an elemental love"
"Mother of us all"
"A different death"