The day Moses met God, he asked,
“What is your name?”,
“I have no name”, comes the reply,
From a Source now unnamed.
All alone atop that Holy Mountain,
Moses worries after those waiting down below.
“Without a name”, he pleads, “How will my people come to know
You from all the other gods
Belonging to these poor, lost, wandering men?”
Was it courageous, or cowardice to stand there in that place,
And so boldly ask God for the Grace –
To become small enough for them?
“This, not that” was the first and only Law given
By God to those two humans in the Garden.
An instruction for an era lost,
The Garden now invisible,
And yet –
Just like Moses and his people, most of us here
Are still believing “this, not that” will save us
From the pain of our uncertainty.
Shaped by years of wandering through deserts
Of our own,
Are we not guilty of thirsting after the image
Of arriving –
Somewhere, each one of us a beggar.
“This, not that, black or white, Please Lord, make it simple”.
Moses could have said that.
I hear it in his question.
Yet, God, unchanged and ever changing, always sets the tone –
A riddle for an answer.
Or perhaps, an Answer for minds too riddled to hear it:
“I AM”.
Do you ever wonder what that sound was like in the ears of the man who heard it first?
Could it have been pronounced “A-UM”?
I’ve heard that sound fall from the mouths of people
Perched atop holy mountains of their own.
Spandex on their bodies,
Twenty dollars for enlightenment.
Do they know the Holy mountain upon which they are standing?
They’ve at least removed their shoes.
“OM”, it is written, but as it moves from breath, to throat, to tongue, to lips
It sounds
More like this:
“Ahhhhhhhhhh—Ummmmmmm”.
The Beginning and The End.
The Alpha and The Omega.
The Atman and The Brahman.
Or can we say, The Ego and The Soul?
That which can perceive That which Is.
It’s strange and clear and merciful –
Each ancient tradition tells a story
Of this sound.
Do you recognize it yet?
It’s unclear whether Moses or his people could,
And most days it seems the same for you, and for me –
Perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he bothered once again
To tell us,
“I AM”.
The way, the truth, and the light.
I think we needed someone to show us,
In the flesh.
I AM.
“Stick your finger in my side”, he says,
To his dear doubting friend.
But that’s not what I was taught.
Were you?
Instead, instructed over and over to literalize,
To flatten it down.
But, didn’t God warn Moses?
Oh wait, I mean,
I AM.
Jesus may have been the flesh and bone and blood encounter
With a God
We can’t nail down.
Genesis tells us of Creation from No thing.
Science claims the heart begins as a null-point,
A Zero at the center.
No thing.
Then a twist, and a spin, and suddenly a beat:
I AM.
And while our riddled minds are grasping yet again
After a Name
For the magic happening here,
The temple curtain gets torn straight down the middle,
From top to bottom, falling away in two –
Pieces.
Holy of Holies now unveiled,
Each one of us bracing to be blinded
By a glimpse
Of what’s inside.
Yet, those among us brave or crazy enough
To look
And see –
Will find
No thing is there.
No name.
No nails.
No thing.
Only
I AM.
Did not Siddhartha while sitting under the Bodhi tree
Find
No thing too?
Once named, then unnamed, and renamed:
Awakened one.
One who sees.
Would you look for yourself?
Try Within.
Each one of us already knows this Place,
It’s Only human
Beings who could mistake that inner space
For alienation.
Instead of what it truly is –
Our own Holy ordination.
— Whitney Logan, 5.8.17
Healing My Religion 