Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, Trans. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy. New York: Riverhead Books, 1996, 119.
God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
4 comments:
Loving God, help me to embody you, moving toward the feeling of you even when I don’t know what or where it is. Let me feel everything, beauty and terror, and then let go with a lightness of touch. Help me to create big shadows you can move in.
Lindsay, thanks for this poem. I love Rilke.....Yes, "embody me", that is my ongoing practice and challenge - letting my body be an integral part of my spiritual journey, not something separate. We know the world through our senses and God is everywhere in the world. Why is that so hard to remember?
I love the part of this poem that says "No feeling is final. Don't let yourself lose me." my doubts can quickly lead me to isolation and despair. But I've begun to recognize how I make an idol of my doubt and let it have more power than it inherently has. The words of this poem feel like God talking with me about my doubts.
Here is my hand. thank You so much for wanting it, for wanting me.
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