The Turning Place

When you are fragile, bruised, and filled with fear,
when loneliness corners you in a dead-end alley,
and the only intimacy is the alienation of exile,
when your whole future stands shivering
in the shadow of a towering wall of pain,
and just to breathe cuts you
with the ice cold blade of emptiness,
know He has delivered you to the turning place.

He had to bring you here, or you would never stop
trying to squeeze little drops of happiness
from the diseased and dying bodies
of evanescent pleasures.
You would be doomed to running
in the race that never ends,
in a world of dreams that offers you
no real rest or reward.

Rather, dear traveller, face deliverance
on this starless night.
This grief is God’s gift to a lost soul –
a lantern that shines within you –
and lights your lonely path to the turning place.

Sit down and close your eyes.
The mystic will remove your blindfold of tears,
wash the grief from your mind with Holy Names,
and set your soul in the Sacred Sound of Home.
Then you will see your bright destiny
unfold within you like a shining highway
leading out of this polluted city of broken love.

Welcome, sweet sad traveler, to the turning place.
Many were here before you and many will follow, still.
Some will end their suffering here,
others will turn back to their desires and little losses,
and die again and again, trying to win the day.

But never mind that, now.
You have come here on this fateful, starless night,
to the turning place – the final place of pilgrimage
on the map to the secret treasure
of the endless bliss and blinding Light of God,
hidden just behind the veil
of your broken-hearted dream.