who is the beloved?

[Guest guest]

Who is the Beloved

(a duet)

 

“God has hidden the sea and revealed the foam.

How could the foam move without the sea?

But you see the foam and not the sea.”

-Jalal al-Din Rumi

 

My Beloved....

Confining him to my standards and conditions,as I believe should

prevail in this Universe,keeps me separate from hewho excludes no

one.

 

yes, my love....

 

i am that freedom to reject,

the tension that binds

love and hate, marriage and divorce,

salvation and damnation, satiety and renunciation,

abstinence and reconciliation, birth and death

all dualities between life and resurrection.

i am that bondage,

the freedom that awakens maddest joy.

 

To embrace him as the Universe,is to undertake an adventurewhich is most destructive in nature.

to embrace me is to leave the known for the unknown

universe,

is to melt your arms into plowshares, your plowshares

into holocausts

and allow even your dreams of salvation to rust and

decay.

 

It destroys beliefs, ideas, thoughts, concepts, egos....It is a

surrender to what is,and in that surrender to strive hard for what is

not,and still unconditionally believe in what should be.

i am the archer, i am the bow, i am the string, i am

the arrow

i am sir pellinore and i am the white hart and i am

the quest

in that i require all things, innocent or depraved to

join the quest

that is not a quest, i am that that arises neither as victor nor falls as victim.

 

Of that Glory I sing.Of that unparalleled wisdom and incomparable madness I write.

of all that is glorious i know nothing.

of that remnant that must remain forever unknown and

enigmatic, i am.

Like the water is he,who is the essence of every formyet effortlessly drowns our villages.

 

nay, like none of the elements, am i

not even the blue flame at the heart of the

refiner’s holy fire

essence beyond pure form, i am, form beyond pure

essence

Like the air is he,who is the breath of every formyet remorselessly destroys our homes.

 

nay, not even like virgin space, am i

the seamless womb of all that was or will be

cradling the birth of each exploding messianic star

Like the earth is he,who is the food for every form,yet unsentimentally ruins our crops.

 

nay, neither like prostitute time, am i

the serpent oroborus devouring itself

that like the phoenix it may arise yet again

Like the fire is he,who is the sustenance for every form,yet uncompassionately scorches our pride.

nay, not even like lifeless eternity, am i

i am not all things in that i am beyond the summation

of all that things that in arising redefine infinity

All is and are the beloved.People are the beloved.

 

yes, all creatures bright and dull,

insensible and sensible, are beloved

All qualities united,in one single form.

 

unity within multiplicity

complexity within simplicity

Illusion of harmony...

 

nightmares of eternal chaos....

 

Reality of disharmony...

dreams of infinite order...

 

all created to sustain

 

in one integral cosmic embrace

the suffering of dualityfor itself,

 

the bliss of love

loving love,

and arise from the ashesinto the discovery of nondualityof itself.

only to fall again from beyond

into the discovery of what lies beyond

the illumination of nothing.

I sing the glory of the great Creator, Sustainer and Destroyer.

i dance not as one but three, not three but as one i

sing.

My beloved,never the sameyetalways the same.

 

without you i am nothing,

what is that maddest joy,

with you i am something,

who is that holy child

always, still

am i a holy child?

nay, we are that

child.

 

My beloved, i am you.

”In the name of the father, and the son and the holy spirit

as it was in the beginning and ever shall be

world without end. Amen.”

 

Valentine

 

Mark Christopher Valentine

(11/21/2001)