Go To the Limits of Your Longing
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.
- Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours, I 59
At the limits of my longing, I find a tender ache without bottom. I find a wish to make the world a more peaceful place. I find a desire to be clear and precise in my thinking. I find a courage that I did not know I had, where I can hold my many facets and hear the voices of the world around me.
Things are happening to me, beauty and terror. I see the slide of our civil society into empty, angry banter. I see a rise of love in response to the hate - people giving money and time and life. I am washed in generosity, both my own encounters and the stories I hear.
It is also clear that I am headed out beyond my recall, and I think we all are. Perhaps, hopefully, we always have been, and now it is simply coming into clearer focus. The old strategies of keeping ourselves together are no longer sufficient, and we must discover anew what works. How can we create a loving and just society? How can we reach across every aisle to shank hands with whoever is Over There? How can we discover that it is not such a daunting task, that in fact all it requires is admitting that we really don't know what will happen when we extend ourselves?
I know 2017 by it's seriousness. It is the here and now, same as it ever was and simultaneously fresh in each moment. Where do we begin?
