A Splendor of His Grace

A SPLENDOR OF HIS GRACE
Turns I-XII
by Timothy Lavenz

I

  1. God the Author of all binding wills, surely it is He who guideth the pens of the heavenly-mighty!
  2. Surely it is He who thinketh in believers what is true!
  3. Merciful is He upon those who turn from the lie of the worry of life to trust in Him.
  4. None can match the graciousness of His hand: it metes out favor always according to the plan of His just Will.
  5. Never has He allowed the sin of man to prevail; only for a time of reprieve, that the soul be shocked into reform, does He allow the folly of the unconscionable to continue.
  6. He addles the distracted with endless shadows, dissipates minds with desire’s deceit; yet so may they serve recompense of what they squander and awake.
  7. He dilutes the tepid further with worsening stupors; yet never does He spoil their impulse to the truth.
  8. He rewards the iniquitous with their measure of destruction and death; thus does He reveal the outcome unavoidable to each.
  9. He loads on disbelievers the chatter of the damned, that their spinning wheels may burn; but the stench thus emitted is a teacher.
  10. Thus out of love does He weigh on each the eternal consequence of their deeds;
  11. Friends of God never cease to admire the perfection in His dispensations.
  12. Never will His love be hidden from those who love Him; never will the God-lovers hide themselves.
  13. They who tend their nothingness to His grace shall see His fullness in all its splendor.
  14. They who pray without solution to their future shall taste the holy refuge He provides.
  15. They who do not linger on what fades shall know the living breath of the Most High.
  16. They who remember His name always will not be forgotten by Him on the day of trial.
  17. They who fear the might of His judgment do not error in their ways, though no other man understand.
  18. The vigilance of the God-obedient is ever a boldness unto truth; surely His wisdom is right!

II

  1. The Everlasting-Gracious only hides His face from those who hide from Him;
  2. Most He shines on those who submit to the refining fire of His gaze.
  3. Those who pursue the perishable perish; those who pursue the imperishable surely see the light of God.
  4. Rightly did the Prophets warn against blaspheming the Spirit of His name, for with the Name comes the judgment unto wrath and the judgment unto peace.
  5. Purify, then, the Name of God in thy heart, accepting none but the most invasive of silence and reprieve!
  6. Let no moment pass without restoring to mind the enigma of His patience and impatience.
  7. Long doth He forbear those who repent and do not sorrow over loss of their old ways; soon will He repay the duplicitous for the injury of their sin.
  8. Waste not one moment, then, sorry creature, to crawl thy way of contrition back to His benevolent feet!
  9. Blessed are they who tremble in emptiness for the search of His true face! They shall know the touch of the Physician, the Ancient of Days, and be healed.

III

  1. Weep, creatures of dust, with yearning for the Most-Beloved, that the gates of thy inner sanctum open and His countenance be revealed!
  2. For this wert thou created: no higher aim hast thee than to wait meekly on the succor of thy Lord.
  3. Cast off the shadows that obscure the glory of His gaze; reject the excuses and complaints hindering thy ascent unto His light.
  4. The Kingdom of God belongs not to the wavering, nor admits entry to the hesitant of spirit.
  5. Be of the Essence of Detachment as the Messengers who preceded thee;
  6. In boldness of spirit prove worthy of thy inheritance.
  7. To emulate the Doctrines of the Innate, find certainty of His signs in thine own breast.
  8. Call upon the Lord in thy distress and felicity; on all occasions reverence the generosity of the Lord.
  9. His grace guideth always those who seek His ways without hesitance or regret.
  10. Gentle soul, honor the intimate covenant between thy conscience and thy God! Listen to the promptings of His grace! Unlearn the world!
  11. The genius of His gift awaits thee at thy brink.

IV

  1. The heart of man is flimsy and hard; for shelter he takes smooth falsehoods and grievous complications; he takes comfort in the garment of his lies,
  2. For man fears to be exposed to the countenance of the All-Judging.
  3. Man rigs an awning of ideas and opinions, but the shelter cannot hold against the typhoon of His light.
  4. Before the God of All, man is bare and defenseless; not a one of his excuses will have weight on the Last Day!
  5. Foolish, tepid man! Abandon thy cowardice and step into the beams of the Most High, that thy impurities may be scoured away in this life,
  6. For how much more excruciating will it be at the end, if ye put off the purge today!
  7. Thy softening and thy strengthening God’s grace alone effects; but lacking thy consent He obliges thee to linger in that Hell, where the heart lacks guidance because ye refuse it.
  8. Do not perform thy rites and oblations for man’s eye;
  9. Do not let a single God-directed syllable pass by thy lips without cleansing it of hubris and display.
  10. Treat His precious Name like a treasure to be buried and tended in the blackest soil of thy heart; from there alone may it blossom into a healthy grove of piety and beneficent deeds.
  11. Beware to speak of things of God which ye cannot know; better halt thy tongue and admit thy smallness;
  12. Then God Himself will show thee the tidings thou must bear.
  13. Beware those who boast with learned words about secrets of the Divine, who delve with arcane abstractions and lengthy archaeologies into histories of grave error. Their discourses are stagnant pools that evaporate in His sun.
  14. Behold the unshakeable simplicity of the heart in prayer! It wells up from the All-Embracing, it restores to the Placeless.
  15. Prayer overrunneth the mind and startles all conclusions.
  16. It is the body’s opening to its eternal share, an entry on earth to the Paradise of the All-Aware One.
  17. For there is none in existence who knoweth Him but He; not a one hath predicted His next act, nor comprehendeth the reason for His great deed.
  18. The ambitious speculate, while the weary doubt; the disregardful amass riches of dust, while the anxious self-combust;
  19. Be thou not like unto these, but trust in the Lord.

V

  1. They who rely on the Almighty do not go astray; their time alive they do not waste.
  2. What thou hearest spoken of the Lord in thy depths, heed;
  3. For He has ingrained in thy breast a pardon of His wisdom, called conscience,
  4. And He has bred in thy mind the revelation of his Name, called faith.
  5. Thou art not thine own but belong to the Unseen, Who dwelleth underpinning all, yet is nowhere; Who cannot be contrived as present or gone, being or non-being, nor neither.
  6. He is not mocked by time or space; every limitation refers to His Unlimited.
  7. He bestows His good pleasure as He pleases on those He loves.
  8. He is the Ever-Exalted by Creation, the Supremely Fair.
  9. He is the One who tasteth not the poison of opposites, Who suffers no restriction on His sight.
  10. No utterance, no quiet, lays claim to His voice; when He speaks there is no compulsion.
  11. His invitations are the greatest blessings of human life.
  12. Above is His abode, within is His dimension;
  13. All the laws ye observe, and all those ye cannot, are for Him: to glorify the majesty of His reign.
  14. Bow low, animate crumb, therefore, before the Source of the Bread of Life!

VI

  1. How gracious is the ideal King! Ye owe Him yet unnumbered prostrations ye have failed to give, yet He forbears.
  2. Out of neglect man chooses the wind of lesser breaths; out of jealousy he commends his own windless speech.
  3. Would that man favor the gusts and lulls of God’s Spirit! Then his rudder tongue would sail aright, and he be spared the trials of fury.
  4. Vainglory is the ill no man recovers from; conceited is his heart although he pray; presumption hangs about his neck; it drags him to the lowest of pits.
  5. Who can escape the whole of this vanity, save one who consents to praise His glory, who gives up his life for Him, to respect His claim?
  6. The prize of death to self is a Heaven of His power.
  7. Thy works are not thine own but those of God alone, if good they are and perdure into His Kingdom.
  8. What thou feignest to work alone and for thyself’s sake is but rebellion—those products have one destiny: to burn.
  9. Deprived of His goodness, thou cannot know thyself, nor enjoy thyself, nor be thyself.
  10. To know thyself is to surrender to His unfathomable Will.
  11. To enjoy thyself is to follow the free play of His Joy.
  12. To be thyself is to realize thine own mysterious share of Him.
  13. Seek then His approval in everything! for in no-wise does anything else matter.
  14. He indeed is a gracious Judge, overflowing with lkindness for those who remember and return to Him.
  15. Erect no substitute to this supreme accomplishment, faulty man, and truly ye will know peace in thy days!
  16. Let the prayer of the inner person be thy resource in all thy strivings,
  17. For the well of His goodness knows no bottom, and ye were made to drown in it eternally.

VII

  1. All praise to the Most High God!
  2. From the praise of his minor creatures whose highest goal is to mirror, like slaves, His perfect possibility.
  3. To Him do we entrust the fate of our souls!
  4. May he bestow on us the Word that saves.

VIII

  1. List close to the voice of Him, the Eternal Incumbent, who reigns over all the heavens and the earth.
  2. Truly He and no other has the Word of eternal life.
  3. Worthless are words not commanded by His spirit.
  4. Like chains of silent torture are the writings that do not bring thee to remembrance of Him.
  5. By their iniquity, the greedy have turned the earth’s face into a trash heap of impotent tongues.
  6. The eyes of all have turned from His gaze, afraid to expose the filth of their souls. Foolish hiders!
  7. He is the All-Wise, the All-Knowing; not one of thy deeds escapes His notice; not a one of thy intentions does He not weigh.
  8. Ye feigners of ignorance receive a double punishment: one for falsehood, one for deliberate self-betrayal.
  9. For God frowns most upon the self-beclouding self, the self-evading self, the Spirit-denier:
  10. To such a one befalls the condemnation of despair or worse: the concealed despair of the happy one, whose level is lower than the bug.
  11. Verily God loves the penitent and humble who recognize and amend their sin—who would rather their tongues be cut out than join in the chorus of man’s stupidity!
  12. Verily God loves the one whose freedom is rooted in dependence upon Him.
  13. Verily God loves the realizer of nothingness, who places value not on the impressions in consciousness that pass.
  14. For He is the Almighty Consciousness, the Lone Unpassing; there is no rival to Him.
  15. Wise are they who do not proclaim identity with the great I AM but repent before Him and beseech Him to serve.
  16. For He alone is the Everlasting, the coronation of the instant, the mediatrix of Power and Delight;
  17. No one but Him will the God-fearer praise.

IX

  1. Truly does God hold dear those who give Him thanks all the days of their life,
  2. Who exceed their frame of self to summon memory of Him in their heart.
  3. In words they adore Him, in words they abdicate themselves, in words they accept His silence.
  4. Wordlessly do they supplicate the unknowable Guest in their core to renew their aspiration.
  5. Wordlessly do they trust the mission to incarnate His worth on earth.
  6. Reliant ever on His unreflectable transcendence, the faithful let go of the promises of this world;
  7. Only the promise of His life, eternal, do they honor and accept.
  8. Truly do they live beyond the grave whose gratitude for being has encompassed every fate.

X

  1. To one who has beheld His eye, every treasure is but a relic of His light,
  2. His light not bound by space and time, shadowless, containing all the attributes of the Divine.
  3. By this Light shoudst thou yearn thy heart to be pierced, that thy blood may be irradiated by Him, the Essence of Deathlessness.
  4. Testify: that His light is the Goodness beyond all goods, the great Enabler of Attainment, matchless leaven for the dough of the soul!
  5. Verily the one who denies himself, to accept in thanksgiving permeability to His will, who exerts to strip away the veils of glory so His Impenetrable Meaning can be discerned—verily, such a one lets no moment pass without prayer.
  6. Verily is the oblate to His glory the favored one, who has received His disillusionment from Time, who now knows no other End than He!
  7. For how could death touch such a one whose whole being is in the Hands of the Most High? If he lives, it is to God’s honor. If he dies, it is in God’s name.
  8. The death which captures ephemera touches not the essence of the creature whose life is Him.
  9. Death is but the act of His remembrance—henceforth, forgetting can no more exist.
  10. The beloved longs to rest in the beloved; so the sighs of sleep may rise in harmony with the spotless Word.
  11. Testify: the moment of oblation is unending, ever-renewed.
  12. They who practice this gift from God in fidelity know their dwelling is the Spirit Himself.
  13. All praise to Him who is the Undeniable, the King of Kings, the Source of all commotion and discovery!
  14. He it is Who hath placed in us the dauntless curiosity that drives us through all truth and back to Him.
  15. All praise to the Master of seam and motion, the Fixture of Peace in the breast of the faithful, who never goes away!
  16. All praise to the Light in the mirror of the Soul!
  17. May He cause a worthy reflection within us, that our lives may be trustworthy mementos to his most-exalted Way.

XI

  1. Know ye mortal beings that the One ye adore is the Simple!
  2. All idolatry He abhors; attach therefore in thy hearts no symbols of the false to Him, lest He repel thee before thy worship begins.
  3. An image cleansed of its mirage, a sound stripped of its signal, a word surrendered to His Word—these are acceptable in His eyes.
  4. Those among thee dressed in holy garb have sullied the truth of Omnipresent-God.
  5. Those who devise access routes to the All-Englobing have forfeited the Way.
  6. Rationalizers explain but the fallacy of their own thoughts. How many days will thee, tormented disciple, follow the detours they arrange for thy subduing and subjugation to their speeches?
  7. To love the Lord is to remember Him and answer His call always; what else do ye need to hear?
  8. The Lord your God blames lack of faith for lack of faith! No other reason for man’s desolation should ye seek.
  9. The complexities in thy books have measured His effacement in thy memory; the sophistication of thy categories has led to tear His Name to pieces,
  10. But His revenge on the instigator is to let the weeds to grow, even if they choke.
  11. Verily dost He use such poison to test the earnestness of thy resolve and faith.
  12. From which fountain willst thou drink, that of man’s insolence or of His beauty? Where seekest thou thy ultimate fill?
  13. Say: God Almighty has no need for thy praise; thy falsehoods and idols only drive His grace away, to thine own detriment and shame.
  14. Ye squander the invitation of the Transcendent Door, preferring to squabble over hinges and the wood; ye tamper with fragments of blueprints ye could never understand!
  15. Learn: without His eyes in thine, thou canst see nothing but the ignorance produced in thy cleverness and untruth.

XII

  1. Verily the fraction of men’s words that approach to accuracy about Our designs numbers like one star per thousand galaxies.
  2. Would that thou might discern that star and follow without hesitance the road of servanthood We command!
  3. For man has no joy apart from his dissolution in the Mystery;
  4. The future We have wrought for him he can only find through a final surrender;
  5. Commend therefore thy spirit now, as at death, that We might confer on thee the completion We intend!
  6. Thou deservest not what We extend; wait no more to accept it!
  7. To thee We grant the ecstasy of epiphany, for surely there is no utterance We do not permit; but when thine own utterance thee adore above Us, surely will We let thy house of cards collapse.
  8. Patient are We with all the doings of man; only watch how We let each reap just what he sows!
  9. Only he who marvels at the freedom We bestow can know within how he is to use it without perishing.
  10. Especially the lover of riddles, he is dear to Us: for he will learn the Word grander than all riddles.
  11. Patiently We grant man his convolutions, his theology, his philosophy; never have We prevented man a single thought of God!
  12. Only taste the bounty behind it—the Granter of this grant!
  13. He is the sweetness thou hast sought from all thy beginnings, the completion thou hast cherished by all thy ends.
  14. He is the Tear of Redemption whose silent fall in the soul brings thee an unshakeable confidence before death.
  15. Verily He yearns for thine eyes to stagger open, that thou mayest bow before the Majesty of the Invisible!
  16. Thou who treadest in the paths of thought, quiet thyself, discontinue thy exercises, abandon the venues and the routes!
  17. The Lord thy God alone is the Almighty; He pervades in the Placeless, where He has prepared a place for thee in His simplicity.
  18. Access to His abode cannot be fabricated—remember this before thou wasteth another word!
  19. Drive thy consciousness to meditate on Him who has no rival among created things, Who dwells in thine own transcendence without need of any cause.
  20. Heed this prompt of the Ancient of Days; dally no longer in the games erected by man for his own self-glorification.
  21. Whatever man has dreamed to do apart from God is only a measurement of his need for purgation.
  22. We do not condemn the earnest and never shall We, nor do We frown at any human word that intends God. But who can know if this is so, but Us?
  23. Tremble therefore, that thy show of earnestness be not vain.