Tag: Rainer Maria Rilke

All This Falling

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The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
as if orchards were dying high in space.
Each leaf falls as if it were motioning “no.”
And tonight the heavy earth is falling
away from all other stars in the loneliness.
We’re all falling. This hand here is falling.
And look at the other one. It’s in them all.
And yet there is Someone, whose hands
infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.
~Rainer Maria Rilke “Autumn” translated by Robert Bly

 

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Sometimes I wake from my sleep
with a palpitating start:
dreaming of falling,
my body pitching and tumbling
yet somehow I land,
~oh so softly~
in my bed,
my fear quashed and cushioned by
awaking safe.

I feel caught up,
held tightly,
rescued amid the fall
we all will do,
like leaves drifting down
from heaven’s orchard,
like seeds released like kisses
into the air,
the earth rises to meet me
and Someone cradles me there.

 

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The Summer Was Immense

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Lord: it is time.
The summer was immense.
Let fall your shadows on the sundials,
upon the fields let loose your winds.

Command the last fruits to be full;
give them just two more southern days,
Press them to completion, and chase the last
sweetness into the heavy wine.

Who has no house now – he will never build.
Whoever is alone now, long will so remain;
will stay awake, and read, and write long letters
and wander the alleys up and down,
restless, as the leaves are drifting.
~Rainer Maria Rilke

 

 

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As summer slowly winds down over the next few days, fatigue is settling like a fog over all things.  After months of immense energy and growth and flourish and heat, there is now weariness and dryness and wilting.

A good rain yesterday helped ready us for the change.  We who are thirsty had a good slurp and still beg for more.  Restless, we are loosening like tired leaves, preparing to lose our grip and be freed to drift, landing softly wherever the next breeze will take us.

 

 

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The Golden Amber of Her Eyes

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photo by Tomomi Gibson

 

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photo by Nate Gibson

 

She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen
into her, so that, like an audience,
she can look them over, menacing and sullen,
and curl to sleep with them.
But all at once

as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs
suspended, like a prehistoric fly.
~Rainer Maria Rilke from “Black Cat”

 

 

 

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Bobbi arrived on the farm 14 years ago after living a life of luxury in town.  She couldn’t accompany her owner to life in the big city so moved in complete with a van full of her own cat furniture, a personal chair, toys, and special cuisine.  When she strode out of her cat carrier, took a look around and climbed into the nearest tree, she never looked back at the accoutrements of her former full time indoor life.  She became queen of the farm, undisputed and regal, watching the goings-on from a carefully calculated and royal distance, never interacting with her subjects unless it was absolutely necessary.

She tolerated other cats, but barely.  They scattered when she came in view.  She thought dogs were a waste of fur covering empty skulls, but when they met her needs, like on a chilly night, she would happily bunk down with them.  They were astonished but grateful for her royal blessing when she decided to sleep among them: a two-dog and one-cat night.

She chose only one person to be subject to: our daughter-in-law Tomomi.  On Tomomi’s first visit from Japan, Bobbi approached her and decided then and there they were meant for each other.  During Tomomi’s annual summer visits, Bobbi brought her mice on the welcome mat and followed her like a puppy, coming only when Tomomi called, and deigned to allow her to touch her calico coat.

Earlier this year, nearly 16 years old, Bobbi took over the front porch bench when our black cat Jose died.  She liked to stay a bit closer to us, but seemed thinner and less disdainful.  When two kittens arrived to live in the barn this summer and within a week formed a coup and took over the front porch, Bobbi retreated again to her other quarters on the farm. I worried a bit that she had given in too easily with no yowls or flying fur.

Yesterday morning she lay still on the grassy slope out front – she was never one to take her naps where her subjects could see her.  I knew her long life was over.

Long live Queen Bobbi.  May you forever reign in our hearts.

 

 

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photo by Nate Gibson

 

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photo by Nate Gibson

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photo by Nate Gibson

God Leaps Out

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… And now in vast, cold, empty space, alone.
Yet hidden deep within the grown-up heart,
A longing for the first world, the ancient one …
Then, from His place of ambush, God leapt out.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

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That’s the mystery of us.
But then there’s the mystery of God,
lying in ambush,
watching, waiting,
waiting for the fulfillment of time,
the nexus of his grace and our vulnerability.
Maybe today.
~Kathleen Mulhern “Hangs My Helpless Soul on Thee”

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Sometimes, during a long night of fitful sleep,
when nothing makes sense and worry takes over,
I ponder the mystery of how our brains were made to wonder at all.

I long for a simpler time,
for clarity of purpose,
for laughter through tears,
for gratitude even in hard times.

Yet as I toss and turn,
I know my God lies in wait for me,
as He watches for the moment
when being ambushed is exactly what I need.

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Turn Aside and Look: This Temporary Perishable Earth

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Not all flesh is the same: People have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another.
So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable;  it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.

I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—  in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.  For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

“Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”
from 1Corinthians 15

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We are continually overflowing
toward those who preceded us,
toward our origin, and toward
those who seemingly come after us.
 
It is our task to imprint this
temporary, perishable earth
into ourselves so deeply,
so painfully and passionately,
that its essence can rise again
invisibly, inside us.
 
We are the bees of the invisible.
We wildly collect the honey
of the visible, to store it
in the great golden hive of the invisible.
~Rainer Maria Rilke from The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

 

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Love Stored Up

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the finale this morning
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As it began this morning

Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.
~Rainer Maria Rilke from Letters to a Young Poet

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The sunrise this morning kept giving and giving, vanquishing the darkness through an illumination that made all things, even the sorry and the plain, beautiful.

So is the love of one person for another, reflecting the Light that illuminates us all, even to the depths of our shadows.

May we too give and give without ceasing, our plainness made beautiful, our shadows no more.

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The Twinges of this World

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Under a canopy of leaves,
the irises, bountiful,
the calico butterfly flashing

and this one golden head
of a dazzling sunflower grasping
its cowled neck,

outweighing its stalk

in order to turn,
full bonneted,
to the absolute light.

What wonders these are:
things struggling
filament by filament,

birds twittering in a laughter
that could be weeping,
barely feeling the twinges of this world,

where the weak get stronger
or snailish with cracks

a day at a time.
~Judith Harris “Recovery”

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“Be patient and without bitterness, and realize that the least we can do is to make coming into existence no more difficult for Him than the earth does for spring when it wants to come.”
Rainier Marie Rilke

We feel the twinges of struggling to live broken in difficult times; indeed all our days are difficult times. We won’t get out of this predicament alive.

Whether we care or not about what happens next does not alter the fact Christ dwells with us; our heavy heads bow, turning to the absolute light. The coming of spring will not be stopped by a slumbering disinterested earth.

Like Mary, we must say:  “Let it be”, not “no, not me, not now.”

We are transformed, simply by accepting He has come on our behalf:
an oh so difficult faith that connects us like a filament to heaven,
like a shoot breaking through the crust of frozen earth to reach the sun in order to bloom,
like the butterfly emerging from its cracked chrysalis to try its wings,
like the snail shell abandoned because we will no longer fit inside its broken walls.

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A Hard Time

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photo by Nate Gibson

It’s a hard time to be human. We know too much
and too little. Does the breeze need us?
The cliffs? The gulls?
If you’ve managed to do one good thing,
the ocean doesn’t care.
But when Newton’s apple fell toward the earth,
the earth, ever so slightly, fell
toward the apple as well.
~Ellen Bass from “The World Has Need of You”

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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 from “Book of Hours”

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For too much of my life I have focused on the future, bypassing the present.  There is always a goal to achieve,  a conclusion becoming commencement of the next phase, a sunset turning right around in a few hours to become sunrise.

When the present is so hard, so overwhelming, so riveting, so tenderly full of life or achingly full of death, I grab hold with all my strength to try and secret it away and keep it forever.   Even if it slips away from me, elusive and evasive, torn to bits by the unrelenting and devastating movement of time, I have felt the earth move, ever so slightly, toward me.

So, whether out of joy or pain, I must write to harvest those times to make them last a little bit longer.  Maybe not forever; they will be lost downstream into the ether of unread words.

Even if unread, I am learning that words, which had the power in the beginning to create all life, can bring tenderness and meaning back to my life.  I embody Him.

How blessed to live the gift twice: not just in the moment itself but in writing words that preserve and treasure it all up.

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Raining Down Roses

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You love the roses – so do I. I wish
The sky would rain down roses, as they rain
From off the shaken bush. Why will it not?
Then all the valley would be pink and white
And soft to tread on. They would fall as light
As feathers, smelling sweet; and it would be
Like sleeping and like waking, all at once!
~George Eliot

 

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It was gardener/author Alphonse Karr in the mid-19th century who wrote that even though most people grumble about roses having thorns,  he was grateful that thorns have roses.

There was a time when thorns were not part of our world, when we knew nothing of suffering and death, but pursuing and desiring more than we were already generously given, we received more than we bargained for.

We continue to reel under the thorns our choices produce — every day there is more bloodletting.

So a Rose was sent to adorn the thorns. We chose thorns to make Him bleed and still do to this day.

A fragrant rose blooms beautiful,
bleeding amid the thorns,
raining down as we sleep and wake,
and will to the endless day.

 

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Abandon entouré d’abandon, tendresse touchant aux tendresses…
C’est ton intérieur qui sans cesse se caresse, dirait-on;
se caresse en soi-même, par son propre reflet éclairé.
Ainsi tu inventes le thème du Narcisse exaucé.
~Rainer Maria Rilke “Dirait-on” from his French Poetry collection ‘Les chansons de la rose’

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You Must Change Your Life

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We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
~Rainer Maria Rilke “Archaic Torso of Apollo”

(these photos were taken at Meijer Sculpture Garden in Grand Rapids, Michigan last month of The American Horse modeled after da Vinci’s drawings of his unfulfilled plan to build a huge bronze horse as the bronze collected for the sculpture was instead used to build cannons to unsuccessfully defend Milan, Italy from French invaders)

Of the horse I will say nothing because I know the times. ~  da Vinci

 

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A work of art,
whether human-made or heaven-sent,
should call us to reflect
on our own creation,
what we bring to this existence.
It should awe us
to praise,
to grace,
to respond,
to change
who we are
and who we will become.

 

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