This clumsy living that moves lumbering as if in ropes through what is not done reminds us of the awkward way the swan walks. And to die, which is a letting go of the ground we stand on and cling to every day, is like the swan when he nervously lets himself down into the water, which receives him gaily and which flows joyfully under and after him, wave after wave, while the swan, unmoving and marvelously calm, is pleased to be carried, each minute more fully grown, more like a king, composed, farther and farther on. -Rainer Maria Rilke (tr. Robert Bly) “You are like Rilke’s Swan in his awkward waddling across the ground; the swan doesn’t cure his awkwardness by beating himself on the back, by moving faster, or by trying to organize himself better. He does it by moving toward the elemental water, where he belongs. It is the simple contact with the water that gives him grace and presence. You only have to touch the elemental waters in your own life, and it will transform everything. But you have to let yourself down into those waters from the ground on which you stand, and that can be hard. Particularly if you think you might drown.... Let go of all this effort, and let yourself down, however awkwardly, into the waters of [your] work†-David Whyte, Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity Rilke's The Swan is one of my favorites! I find myself returning to sit with it every couple of months or so. It serves as a good plumb line. … [Read more...]
Living the Questions
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign language. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.†– Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet I have spent the last six years of my life on a journey with no clear destination in sight - believe me, a most disconcerting place to be at best - all the while having doors closed to me in many improbable and, at times, rude ways. I have felt compelled to prepare myself ... I have felt the continual nudging of the Holy Spirit, but with no true vision of the destination, just the continual (annoying) gentle, nudging, to stay on the path and to remain faithful to the journey, the process, the becoming. Unlike, a pregnant woman, who holds on to the vision of the baby to be birthed at the end of the journey of her pregnancy, the vision of which makes the pregnancy enjoyable and discomforts bearable, for me, there has been no glimpse of the outcome, just a clear nudging to continue the journey which all logic says is crazy. No vision to sustain the discomforts. No vision to affirm the joys. No vision to confirm the path - just a nudging to continue, to be willing and open to the process of becoming. … [Read more...]
