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Tag Archives: Rainer Maria Rilke

The Element of Surprise

07 Thursday Nov 2019

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anxiety, life, Rainer Maria Rilke, sadness, surprising, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

The days seem to be getting shorter and the nights longer now but it’s really just an illusion since the calendar still promises 24 hours (give or take a few seconds). It’s really just the light that has changed or diminished and it’s sometimes harder to keep our inner light switched on. I read a quote from Rainer Maria Rilke this morning that is somewhat comforting as I yawn my way into the morning, remembering how rich in events yesterday was and hoping for the same on this grayish, chilly day.

You mustn’t be frightened if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do. You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall.

Perhaps today will be as surprising as any other…Why not?

The Breath of God

14 Friday Jun 2019

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Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, breath, desire, dream, I AM, longing, Rainer Maria Rilke, strong, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

I felt the need for poetry this morning. Everything is gray and drenched with last night’s rain – definitely Friday. Rainer Maria Rilke’s Book of Hours had been sitting silently on the shelf under my side table for a long time waiting for attention. The subtitle of this translation by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy is Love Poems to God. I read page 81 as a continuing stream of words, a paragraph, which seems suitable to me right now.

I am, you anxious one. Don’t you sense me, ready to break into being at your touch? My murmurings surround you like shadowy wings. Can’t you see me standing before you cloaked in stillness? Hasn’t my longing opened in you from the beginning as fruit opens on a branch? I am the dream you are dreaming. When you want to awaken, I am that wanting: I grow strong in the beauty you behold. And with the silence of stars I enfold your cities made by time.

Can you feel the power within those words? The desire that is waiting for a response? The reason I could not allow a breath between the lines but plunged in and kept swimming until the end? I need to sit now in the silence of which he speaks, even though the morning begins to lighten everything inside and out. Are you there with me?

Slow Work

27 Monday Aug 2018

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Letters to a Young Poet, mothers, patience, perseverance, prayer, Rainer Maria Rilke, St. Augustine, St. Monica, Teilhard de Chardin, the slow work of God, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

ainchwormmarigoldOften a saint’s memorial in the Church calendar brings lots of diverse thoughts to mind. Today Christianity celebrates the feast of St. Monica whose son, St. Augustine of Hippo, had much more overt influence on Church practice than she did. Monica has special remembrance, however, in the lives of Christian mothers who trust God to hear their prayers for their children. Monica is remembered for her perseverance in prayer and thereby credited in large part with the conversion of her son. Clearly, the story of their lives is more complex than that and other influences on Augustine (e.g. St Ambrose) had a part to play. Nevertheless, Monica has been a friend of mothers down through the ages.

Today, in considering the steadfast care (sometimes seen as somewhat over-enthusiastic) of Monica for her son, I think once again of the words of Teilhard de Chardin who counseled trust in the slow work of God. Monica prayed tirelessly for Augustine’s conversion to a good, faith-filled life and was rewarded just before she died with his baptism as a Christian. Similarly, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in his Letters to a Young Poet about the need to “be patient with all that is unsolved in your life…” and “live the questions now.” Monica certainly needed that kind of advice!

Then there are the two children’s songs that help me by making me smile and hold things more lightly when I think I will never come to the end of a task that seems monumental – like clearing clutter or finishing a book I need to read. When those tasks get in the way of seeing the beauty of life I know I can sing: Inchworm, inchworm, measuring the marigolds, seems to me you’d stop and see how beautiful they are…Or maybe even better: Inch by inch, row by row, gonna make this garden grow…

 

 

 

 

 

Once Again, A Reminder

30 Monday Jul 2018

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answers, beauty, Hearts on Fire, impatience, instability, listen, progress, questions, Rainer Maria Rilke, slow work of God, strength, Teilhard de Chardin, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, time, trust

afourtreesThere are two adjacent ranch-style houses on our road whose owners each planted four trees in a row across their front yard. I have watched them grow over the years and sometimes wonder if it was the desire of the owners to have a lot of shade, to hide from the road or just to satisfy their love of trees. They have seemed to me as they’ve grown like a line of sentinels from one yard to the other. Because I am always driving when I pass them, I really don’t know if they are the same kind of trees; I just admire their beauty and their strength.

On my drive home early yesterday evening I was luxuriating in the lush green all around me (not much traffic on our road at 7:00 on a Sunday) when I was brought up short by those trees! Suddenly, after years of tiny incremental growth, they are mammoth and have totally obscured the houses! Today I wonder if I need to pay more attention to the obvious lesson that I have been getting on our own land and now elsewhere about what Teilhard de Chardin calls “the slow work of God” and Rilke describes as living the questions rather than being impatient to find answers. Sometimes it seems as if they have conspired with God on the same message!

I was not surprised this morning on opening the Jesuit prayerbook, Hearts on Fire, to find Teilhard’s words on the page before me. So once again I will try to slow down and listen carefully.

Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability – and that it may take a very long time…(p.102)

 

 

 

 

 

The Morning After

02 Monday Jul 2018

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diversity, divine, future, God, grace, innerness, Rainer Maria Rilke, retreat, reveal, Rilke's Book of Hours, spiritual growth, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

acockcrowingThe weekend just ended brought both old friends and new faces to our tiny “island of grace” (the way I see our small retreat center these days). The privilege of preparing meals for them allowed me observation time of their interactions with one another and the alternation of their movements to and from the conference room – so often peppered with “thank you” or smiles of appreciation for every little thing. I cannot help feeling judgments about people melt from me as I observe the gifts that diversity brings to a retreat where everyone is desirous of spiritual growth. The ways that people dress or speak or choose their food are all overshadowed by the blinding light of their intention toward unity with the Divine (however they perceive the One I call God).

I was prompted to this realization this morning by Rainer Maria Rilke’s thought, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy in a book entitled Rilke’s Book of Hours. I wasn’t looking for anything special as I pulled the book from my side table but here is what I saw upon opening to page 177.

You are the future, the red sky before sunrise over the fields of time. You are the cock’s crow when night is done, you are the dew and the bells of matins, maiden, stranger, mother, death. You create yourself in ever-changing shapes that rise from the stuff of our days – unsung, unmourned, undescribed, like a forest we never knew. You are the deep innerness of all things, the last word that can never be spoken. To each of us you reveal yourself differently: to the ship as coastline, to the shore as a ship.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Slow Work

05 Thursday Oct 2017

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gratitude, impatient, instability, Letters to a Young Poet, new spirit, patience, progress, Rainer Maria Rilke, Teilhard de Chardin, the slow work of God, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, trust, work

amapleleafturningToday as I sit in my chair waiting for light to come I have a sense of urgency because there is a lot to achieve before my head hits the pillow again, so to speak. The days are getting shorter now. I was dismayed to know that when my alarm woke me a while ago it wasn’t a mistake. It was 6:30 and still dark outside. And yesterday we needed lights on in our living room by 6:00PM. I wonder why I was so astonished; the solstice was almost two weeks ago! I guess it is true that the older I get, the faster time seems to go.

Lest this devolve into a lament about old age which I refuse to allow because of my reverence for the wisdom of my elders, I remind myself of the advice of the great Jesuit paleontologist and theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin who is often quoted as saying: “Trust in the slow work of God.” I’ve known that line for a long time but this morning I came across the text from which that line originates.

Above all, he writes, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability – and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you; your ideas mature gradually – let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don’t try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will) will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.

As I was copying Teilhard’s words, they seemed similar to Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet” wherein similar advice about patience in life was given. I smile as I consider the necessity of hearing about the ongoing need for patience with myself and with the flow of life at my age. It is perhaps never totally achieved but maybe that is a good thing as it calls us to always reach for “the more” while accepting what is at this very moment. So on I go, slowly enough to notice the birdsong and the emerging color in the maple leaves that have now come into view, but ready as well to tackle the tasks of this day in patience and gratitude for life in this world in this time.

 

 

 

 

 

Not Knowing, Encore

30 Wednesday Aug 2017

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anxiety, compassion, death, devastation, distress, Louisiana, Rainer Maria Rilke, sadness, sharing, Texas, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

People are rescued from flood waters from Hurricane Harvey on an air boat in DickinsonThat place of “not-knowing” that I spoke of yesterday still holds me today as I think of the storm called Harvey that just won’t quit. How do people recover from that kind of devastation – both environmental and human? Even here, at almost the farthest northern point in our country away from those swirling waters and broken lives, I feel viscerally the distress and death. Physical death, the death of dreams, of possessions – all must reside inside any of us who have even seen the images on television and more likely if we know people living in Texas – and today in Louisiana. I have rarely felt the draw of depression on such a scale.

Slogging through the images in my mind I try to focus on the concomitant pictures of and interviews with those who have come with their boats or their bodies, strong enough to contribute to the rescue of so many stranded inhabitants of the flood zones. And then I read a small snatch of something Rilke wrote that seems like a far-fetched thought to bring to the present conversation but is all I have to offer to my sadness.

You mustn’t be frightened, he writes, if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than you have ever seen; if an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do. You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall.

Perhaps that sadness and anxiety is leading to a deeper ability to be compassionate, a deeper willingness for unity – knowing that we are all connected and owe each other our sharing in that pain of loss. I don’t know and so here I can only sit offering my “not-knowing.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Encouraging Words To God

10 Tuesday Jan 2017

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Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, God's strength, Rainer Maria Rilke, relationship, solitude, strength, sunlight, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

ashaftoflightIn Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God I found this morning the following lines of what a future relationship with God might look like from his perspective at the turn of the 20th century. I was especially struck by the personal tone and vivid images that he used as he encouraged God about God’s strength in the world – perhaps still in the future today or ready for manifestation now through us.

You too [God] will find your strength. We who live in this time cannot imagine how strong you will become – how strange, how surprising, yet familiar as yesterday. We will sense you like a fragrance from a nearby garden and watch you move through our days like a shaft of sunlight in a sickroom. We will not be herded into churches, for you are not made by the crowd, you who meet us in our solitude. We are cradled close in your hands – and lavishly flung forth. (II, 26)

Rilke’s Wisdom

21 Sunday Aug 2016

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answers, intention, Letters to a Young Poet, live, patient, perspective, Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke's Book of Hours, Sunday, the Lord's Day, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, unfinished business, unsolved

arilke.jpgIt has become my practice every morning to consider each day a clean slate for my living. Of course there are on-going concerns or projects and I have my lists of “unfinished business” from the previous day (or week or month…) but my intention is to look at everything from the perspective of this day and leave yesterday to the history books. Even more important does that intention become on Sundays for two reasons. It is, after all, the first day of the week, the beginning of a new cycle of events. Additionally it is for Christians the Lord’s Day, the day of Resurrection, thereby giving impetus to thoughts of God and my own sense of hope for myself and the world.

My desire to catapult myself from sleep into newness this morning led me to Rilke’s Book of Hours. As I leafed through the pages, out fell a small sheet of notebook paper that I’ve kept for almost 50 years. A little yellowed by the years, it is otherwise in good shape, having been passed from one book to another from time to time. On it my friend Jan had printed a famous quote from Rilke’s work, Letters to a Young Poet, that was probably encouragement for me during a moment of uncertainty in the novitiate. It was the first time I had encountered Rilke and that text but it has stayed with me and been shared countless times with others. I am fairly certain I have even shared it here. Sometimes, though, repetition is good for the soul – and even the mind. Such is the case for me this morning so I offer it as a new beginning for a new week. May we all be blessed in our seeking!

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers that cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will gladly, without even noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wisdom Seekers

22 Saturday Aug 2015

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Book of Hours, God speaks to each of us, life, limits, longing, Rainer Maria Rilke, retreat, seriousness, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Wisdom tradition fo Christianity

backfiled08232015Today we are blessed by the presence of a group of people here at our center/home who have come to experience in a weekend a taste of what we have to offer of the Wisdom tradition of Christianity. I go in a few minutes to morning prayer at 7:00am where in silence we seek the God who calls us all. A page from Rilke’s Book of Hours fairly shouts an invitation to this brief encounter that will lead us into a day of exploration of spiritual practice. He writes the following message for us, I think, for today.

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.”

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