One of my favorite friends in writing: across time and space his words have padded my inner safe place at moments in this decade of soon-to-be-done 20 where all that was certain was the uncertainty. Yes, I usually tried to love it and through that somehow it became so: loved and somewhat bearable and known and alright.
In that snare of paradox I found my own rhythm of loving, trusting and letting go; of knowing what to pick up and when. It's a dance with the world that delivers and the self that desires. An ongoing lesson in bridging the work expressed without and the sacrifice unseen within, the quiet messages received and the waiting for your will to come through and commit. All a certain kind of effort in parsing the light from the sin, the tiny crimes against the heart we all sometimes commit.
That writer is Rainer Marie Rilke. His name even soothes me somehow. Like a tender-sighted sage, a good grandpa or woolen-clad neighbor, bearded, who knows that all will be well, and can dispense of compassion and bolstering wisdom. Maybe standing on the porch within earshot of your sighs, offering a helping ear from his rocking chair in the early darkness of a crisp, cool night.
The bits and pieces of his sweetness strewn across the halls of the web can maybe sum the feel of what he stands for as a being. Might not match quite what I feel, but that wouldn't need be the clue for you to know that his contribution paved a humble road made of some kind of real noble truth.
And here, in this simple stanza, is captured something in the way of why... Why I dedicate my time and my life to spiritual practice. The farther I go down my road the more I sense the very precarious edge, the sword that sets me apart from the ways of the big bad world and sets me into the bush of a journey towards the soul. The soul of man, of God if I dare can, of my own intimately brewed blend of breath in the skin.
To unfold all the creases and lies pressed into me, by me, with or without my consent over time, over eons perhaps: this is the nature of the cutting through, of the making, of the walking the path; the nature of blazing fires I set time and time again, like a ranger who knows that to clear a new season, some damage must be done to what's simply overgrown. May it bring us closer...
I want to unfold,
I don't want to stay folded anywhere
Because where I am folded,
There I am a lie...
- Rainer Marie Rilke
More of him here
In that snare of paradox I found my own rhythm of loving, trusting and letting go; of knowing what to pick up and when. It's a dance with the world that delivers and the self that desires. An ongoing lesson in bridging the work expressed without and the sacrifice unseen within, the quiet messages received and the waiting for your will to come through and commit. All a certain kind of effort in parsing the light from the sin, the tiny crimes against the heart we all sometimes commit.
That writer is Rainer Marie Rilke. His name even soothes me somehow. Like a tender-sighted sage, a good grandpa or woolen-clad neighbor, bearded, who knows that all will be well, and can dispense of compassion and bolstering wisdom. Maybe standing on the porch within earshot of your sighs, offering a helping ear from his rocking chair in the early darkness of a crisp, cool night.
The bits and pieces of his sweetness strewn across the halls of the web can maybe sum the feel of what he stands for as a being. Might not match quite what I feel, but that wouldn't need be the clue for you to know that his contribution paved a humble road made of some kind of real noble truth.
And here, in this simple stanza, is captured something in the way of why... Why I dedicate my time and my life to spiritual practice. The farther I go down my road the more I sense the very precarious edge, the sword that sets me apart from the ways of the big bad world and sets me into the bush of a journey towards the soul. The soul of man, of God if I dare can, of my own intimately brewed blend of breath in the skin.
To unfold all the creases and lies pressed into me, by me, with or without my consent over time, over eons perhaps: this is the nature of the cutting through, of the making, of the walking the path; the nature of blazing fires I set time and time again, like a ranger who knows that to clear a new season, some damage must be done to what's simply overgrown. May it bring us closer...
I want to unfold,
I don't want to stay folded anywhere
Because where I am folded,
There I am a lie...
- Rainer Marie Rilke
More of him here
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