I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.
I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I've been circling for thousands of years
and I still don't know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?
Book of Hours, I 2

Dark Times

"Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.
In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.
And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am."
Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29

Rilke

Second Chances

I love the dark hours of my being
In which my senses drop into sleep.
I have found in them as in old letters

My private life that is already
lived through and become wide
and powerful, now like legends.
Then I know that there
Is room in me for a second
Huge and timeless life.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Darkness

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.

Rilke 

Rilke

Dear darkening ground,
you've endured so patiently the walls we've built,
perhaps you'll give the cities one more hour

and grant the churches and cloisters two.
And those that labor—let their work
grip them another five hours, or seven,

before you become forest again, and water, and widening wilderness
in that hour of inconceivable terror
when you take back your name
from all things.

Just give me a little more time!
I want to love the things
as no one has thought to love them,
until they're worthy of you and real.

Rilke 

Secret of Death

"The great secret of death, and perhaps its deepest connection with us, is this: that, in taking from us a being we have loved and venerated, death does not wound us without, at the same time, lifting us toward a more perfect understanding of this being and of ourselves."  Rilke

Perspective

Perhaps everything terrible is, in its deepest being, something that needs our love. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Inspiration

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 a 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.

Rilke
Book of Hours, I 59

Purpose

"The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things."   Rilke

Surrender

"Let life happen to you.   Believe me; life is in the right, always."   Rilke

Solitude in Relationship

"I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protect the solitude of the other."  Rilke

Unconditional Love

"For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, for the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation."   Rilke

Living the Questions

"Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart.   Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language.   Do not now look for the answers.   They cannot be given to you because you could not live them.   It is a question of experiencing everything.   At present you need to live the question.   Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer , some distant day."   Rainer Maria Rilke

Rilke

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.

I want to free what waits within me

so that what no one has dared to wish for

may for once spring clear

without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,

but this is what I need to say.

May what I do flow from me like a river,

no forcing and no holding back,

the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,

these deepening tides moving out, returning,

I will sing you as no one ever has,

streaming through widening channels

into the open sea.

... Rainer Maria Rilke