Rick Savage
WHAT LIFE HAVE YOU?
WHAT LIGHT HAVE YOU?
WHAT LIFE HAVE YOU?
WHAT LIGHT HAVE YOU?
I took my lamp and went and sat
Where men of another creed and custom
Dwelt together in bonds of common search.
I pressed my lamp close to my bosom,
Lest adverse winds of thought and criticism,
and the damp of unsympathy should snuff it out.
And many a trembling prayer hung upon my lips.
But I determined that I would love--just love.
I loved and listened and learned, and now and then
threw in a thought or word or observation.
I heard their gentle speech, saw their mild ways;
felt the Hand of Peace rest gently on my soul.
Here was not the tearing of the flesh,
nor the fierce agony of the spirit, in its quest for
God.
They gently searched and, through the crevices of
their thought,
the light of the Father's Face streamed in.
They caught the footfalls of the Mighty Spirit,
as he moved each moment through palpitating
Nature.
And I heard them tune their heartstrings to catch
the music
of God, as he hummed and sang through things.
But when, in sympathetic talk and mutual quest,
I asked the learned pundit whether he had found
A "jiwan mukta," one who knew deliverance, here
and now;
He sadly shook his head and said, "I have not seen."
In his voice spoke an aching world: "I have not
seen."
Then there stole within my heart a quiet joy;
for I saw, amid the search of peoples and races,
One standing who, with Chalice in hand, offered here
and now
to thirsty souls a crystal draught of life eternal,
which, if a man drink, he shall never thirst again.
Had I not drunk? Had he not put the Chalice
To my parched lips, and, with thirst assuaged,
had not my happy soul gone singing down the years?
A child had thus revealed to him, through prayer and
Surrender of the mind and will, that for which
the wise and prudent had vainly searched
and caught but glimpses; while I, unworthy,
stood face to Face.
As I pondered thus, I glanced, with trembling, at my lamp--
And lo, it burned up brighter than before!
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