Ever Widening Circles

green hill

Yesterday I came upon a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke that brought me immeasurable comfort, a strange sense of connection across time and space, as though the very things in me that seemed incomprehensible and sad had already been experienced, expressed, and completely understood.

I'd been feeling weary and futile, like I've just been going around in circles, and when I read the words below, I thought, circles, of course. It's a searching, a spinning, a constant exploration. The circles widen as our wanderings expand, and even far from the center, we sometimes glimpse the sacred. But there's also an acknowledgment here that the orbit we are in may not be completed or yield final answers, and yet we must give ourselves to it. Stop fighting. Fall into the mystery. Or something like that.  The poem:

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 have been circling around God, that primordial tower.

I've been circling for thousands of years

and still I don't know: am I a falcon,

a storm, or a great song?

For some reason those particular lines deeply resonated, not so much in the words as in feelings, like a song or a prayer I already knew, but only deep inside:It was Rilke too who said:

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.

Ah, serious life. It is that.Later, I did a little more exploration in the universe that is the internet, and I found a podcast and transcript of an interview on one of my favorite programs (On Being with Krista Tippett) with an insightful and learned woman named Joanna Macy. She said a lot of things that made sense to me, interspersed with beautiful passages of Rilke's poetry.

She also offered the following advice that has become my Christmas wisdom in a year of muted holidays:"The biggest gift you can give is to be absolutely present, and when you're worrying about whether you're hopeful or hopeless or pessimistic or optimistic, who cares? The main thing is that you're showing up, that you're here and that you're finding ever more capacity to love this world because it will not be healed without that."

Ever more capacity to love...it's the gift and the quest.

Remember, too: what batters you becomes your strength. That's another line from Rilke to hold onto.S

uch bounty. I even discovered a sound clip of Joanna Macy reading Rilke's Go to the Limits of Your Longing, and I'll share it here, so you're one click away from something beautiful and encouraging:

[audio mp3="http://www.cynthiacarbone.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Go-to-the-Limits-of-Your-Longing_-by-Rainer-Maria-Rilke-read-by-Joanna-Macy.mp3"][/audio]