This is What I Ask For
Don’t try to figure God out.
Stop thinking about Them.
Instead, invite the Divine into your bed.
Leave yourself in the kitchen.
He is not called by your priming
and holying-up your body.
She is not moved by intellectual,
value-laden or religious ritualizations.
They are not part of a spiritual quest
discovered like colored eggs in the
parking lot at this year’s Easter festival.
I cannot tell you exactly how to find Jess. *
Perhaps He moves in when you are not there.
Nonetheless, those aforementioned practices
are well and good for quieting the soul,
developing discipline and God-given attributes;
good for becoming a decent teacher of God,
a kind human being.
But what heart would be content with this?
Not mine!
Go into the quiet room.
Extinguish the candle of all your
spiritual ideas.
Let every part of you sleep, but Desire,
wakeful in watching for the Beloved,
with but His name upon your lips,
in humble-expectancy, in gratitude.
After a very long night empty of His Love
I realize,
it is not me who has been desirous all these years.
It is not me who waits with longing-patience.
It is Him! The Beloved Calls.
It is Jesus with whispered, tender howling
Who inwardly dwells,
coveting my soul,
succeeding in a delicate unity
though I arrogantly believed it
would come of me, of something I do,
or seek, or believe.
If you bring even a hint of ego, pomposity, or control
to the marriage bed,
(even though you don’t know you do),
He cannot come and dwell within you.
His Love cannot be felt.
Still, I take comfort in sincerity.
And getting close to truth is getting close to Jess.
Our Love is a powerful mystery.
For all my weakness and posturing,
delaying the rapt consummation,
He has His ways. He is compassionate.
Sometimes, when I am weary and discouraged,
inspiration arrives through the senses,
or imagination or other Helpers.
These absorb and multiply every glint of love I offer.
There it is again – it’s not my love offered
but the Love of God through the soul
graced by Desire to expand.
He is the Expansion that I cherish.
He is every glimmer and extension
and so much more.
This is what I ask for…
More,
please help me to hold More.
*Jess is Jesus