stream of consciousness


the kind of courageous love i need
seems to only exist
in the future

but why can't this unceasing compassion for humanity
exist in the now?
now, without having to purge this "self" of doubt
and now without having to free this "self" from my dangerous assumption
that life can only be bold with a new beginning,
that a sentence: i love you.
can only start behind a closing punctuation...
although the kind of love i want
can't be reduced to words:

agape
ah-gah-pey

sometimes i think that i can only be truly helpful
or can only find my purpose
without this penetrating baggage
i carry everywhere:
this barnacle guilt or the fear of loneliness
attatched to my beautiful ship
sailing a frenzic "sea of love" or
this explicit ancient mold or
placid growth showing up
underneath every fresh shoot
of god's creation

(it's like i want to be so good that i forget that goodness is a way of life, not an endeavor.
the people who i care about fade out of my presence because i feel like i need
to leave everything in my life of "sin" behind, even the good that held it together.)

today my ethics teacher sees in me a "kindred soul"
but that is not enough to redeem me
from the feeling that to want any attention,
even virtuous and good in itself,
even acknowledging my own soul
is still wanting attention.
it is still wanting to be seperate from the unity
surrounding
or
inside
or perhaps
beyond
my scope of vision.

new age, new thought tells us that we have god inside of us.
what i mean to say is that i need retribution for acts of kindness
even though i see that everything exists as one
and so to give outwardly is to take inwardly
in a universe that is all interconnected
like a massive springing web.

however sometimes i prefer to see earth as a garbage bag
tied up with god's merciful arms.
on occasion god will peak in to see
if anything is worth saving,
any lovely thing to salvage before throwing it away;
and so i always want to be on my best behavior.

yet striving for selflessness
only gets me in the trouble of my own devout judgement
because it either isn't entirely possible
or it is too ethical for everydayness...
(i haven't decided yet.
perhaps i am being a bit pretentious here
in this simple purgatory life
but i never want the simple
to be reduced to stagnance,
or worse. still ever-present is Thoreau's ringing of
"simplify, simplify, simply!")

i have the means now
to not seek this charitable love on the outskirts
but give it a way to be home in me
although i know it takes more to make it comfortable
than i can give in my little willingness
to create...

i watch Mother Teresa as she lowers her arms
to a spastic, anorexic child of twelve
flailing, jumping,kicking, wetting his diaper
revolting against his own nature,
he is unable to express love

his dark eyes meet her rekindling eyes: gentle, steady, giving
and the light is absorbed between them as faith

here is a gift he doesn't flinch to receive
a forgiveness that stops the incessant beating of his heart
only for a second, no question
a connection; a purity without symbols: race, people, earth, universe, galaxy,utopia, heaven...
a love so moving and visible,
that it can only exist in the now.

the child excepts without doubt (god says to love like the children)
there is a divine love present even in the rotting flesh
and she says "it doesn't matter how much you do,
but how much love you put into the doing that matters."
he accepts.

i saw this love today as a blinding truth
but sometimes i think
i can only fully feel it in the future
although to be sure,
my heart knows otherwise.