(From "This Longing," translation by C. Barks and J. Moyne)

Moses heard a shepherd on

the road praying,

"God, where are you? I want to help You,

to fix Your shoes and comb Your hair.

I want to wash Your clothes

and pick the lice off. I want to bring You milk,

to kiss Your little hands and feet when it's time

for You to go to bed. I want to sweep Your room

and keep it neat. God, my sheep and goats

are Yours. All I can say, remembering You,

is ayyyy and ahhhhhhhhh."

Moses could stand it no longer.

"Who are you talking to?"

"The One who made us,

and made the earth and sky."

"Don't talk about shoes and socks with God!

And what's this with Your little hands

and feet? Such blasphemous familiarity sounds

like you are chatting with your uncles.

Only something that grows

needs milk. Only someone with feet needs shoes. Not

God!

Even if you meant God's human representatives,

as when God said, 'I was sick and you did not

visit me," even then this tone would be foolish

and irreverent.

Use appropriate terms. Fatima is a fine name

for a woman, but if you call a man Fatima

it is an insult. Body-and-birth language

are right for us on this side of the river,

but not for addressing the Origin,

not for Allah."

The shepherd repented and tore his clothes and

sighed and wandered out into the desert.

A sudden revelation came then to Moses.

God's Voice:

You have separated Me from one of My own.

Did you come as a Prophet to unite,

or to sever?

I have given such a being a separate and unique way

of seeing and knowing and saying that knowledge.

What seems wrong to you is right for him.

What is poison to one is honey to someone else.

Purity and impurity, sloth and diligence in worship,

these mean nothing to Me.

I am apart from all that.

Ways of worshipping are not to be ranked as better

or worse than one another.

Hindus do Hindu things.

The Dravidian Muslims in India do what they do.

It's all praise, and it's all right.

It's not Me that's glorified in acts of worship.

It's the worshipers! I don't hear the words

they say. I look inside humility.

That broken-open lowliness is the Reality, not the

language? Forget phraseology. I want burning, burning.

Be Friends

with your burning, burn up your thinking and your

forms of expression.

Moses,

those who pay attention to ways of behaving

and speaking are one sort.

Lovers who burn are another."

Don't impose a property tax on a burned-out

village. Don't scold the Lover.

The "wrong" way he talks is better than

a hundred "right" ways of others.

Inside the Ka'aba it doesn't matter which direction

you point your prayer rug!

The ocean diver doesn't need snowshoes!

The Love-Religion has no code or doctrine.

Only God.

So the ruby has nothing engraved on it!

It doesn't need markings.

God began speaking deeper mysteries to Moses.

Vision and words, which cannot be recorded here,

were poured into and through him. He left himself

and came back. He went to Eternity and came back

here. This happened many times.

It's foolish of me to try and say this. If I did say

it,

it would uproot our human intelligences.

It would shatter any writing pen.

Moses ran after the shepherd.

He followed the bewildering footprints,

in one place moving straight like a castle

across a chessboard. In another, sideways,

like a bishop.

Now surging like a wave cresting,

now sliding down like a fish, with always his feet

making geomancy symbols in the sand,

recording his wandering state.

Finally Moses caught up with him.

"I was wrong. God has revealed to me

that there are no rules for worship. Say whatever

and however your Loving tells you.

Your sweet blasphemy is the truest devotion.

Through you a whole world is freed.

Loosed your tongue and don't worry what

comes out. It's all the Light of the Spirit."

The shepherd replied, "Moses, Moses,

I've gone beyond even that. You applied the whip

and my horse shied and jumped out of itself.

The Divine Nature and my human nature

came together.

Bless your scolding hand and your arm.

I can't say what has happened. What I am saying

now is not my real condition. It can't be said."

The shepherd grew quiet.

When you look in a mirror, you see yourself,

not the state of the mirror. The flute player puts

breath into a flute, and who makes the music?

Not the flute. The Fluteplayer!

Whenever you speak praise or thanksgiving

to God, it's always like this dear shepherd's

simplicity.

When you eventually see through the veils to

how things really are, you will keep saying

again and again, "This is certainly not like

we thought it was!"

--Rumi

"For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that through Him, the world might be saved."

The Unitarian understanding of the gospel, to which "Pecan" adhered and exemplified is one that stresses

not solely personal salavation, but addressing systems of injustice that sometimes harm God's most vulnerable

children and manifesting practical "light"--food, defense of the poor and parentless children, equality

for ALL minorities, regardless of "morals and manners."

The gospel in "action"--this is one way "Pecan" lived his life. This is one way in which the "Son of God"

saves the world--through people who as concerned with "doing the saving" of a broken world as much as "who

is saved"--those who lay there lives down for their friends...and even their enemies, those who even

misunderstand or judge their involvement with social causes that aren‚t always popular among those who seem

the most "religious" or for those peoples estranged from popular mainstream religion.

This is the good news in action--lives lived selflessly like Prichard Farley Collins or "Pecan" lived his.

May we all experience this bliss of goodwill, peace and equality for all, that path of "the road less

traveled" as did my uncle, "Pecan." With our hearts opened by the grace of paradise let us even now be

embraced by the LOVE THAT IS.