"Go to the Limits of Your Longing" -Rilke
Previously posted on Nov 1, 2020
Where I am it's a cold, damp first morning of November. It's like nature is asking me to get serious.
My response?
I'm already pretty serious. I'm not sure I need to strengthen that neural pathway to be honest. I can easily tune into the severity of this seasonal change in the midst of second wave COVID and the worried planning it provokes. Right now I'm more interested in how to weave a few extra threads of joy into the fabric of my daily life. How to more easily and frequently transition between tending the practical and entering a space of wide open possibility, of embodied awe and wonder.
There's no getting around my to-do list. I might be able to triage a little, but my life includes responsibilities and commitments. When I'm using my left brain to strategize and implement a million plans to keep my business, home and community involvement going I find it hard to really see the sun making diamonds on the river, or to be touched by the cardinals passing each other birdseed, beak to beak.
I want to see and feel those things, to take them in so deeply I'm transformed. When I was in my twenties, I had enough time to bike to the beach and lie in the sand for as long as I wanted. I'd melt into ocean consciousness and eventually my belly would grumble and I'd go make a late supper for myself. It's pretty hard to imagine doing anything like that these days.
This crazy playground of a world is serious. Just ask Rilke:
Go to the Limits of Your Longing
Rainier Maria Rilke/ Translated by Joanna Macy
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.
Book of Hours, I 59
We can address the seriousness of life and still go to the limits of our longing, still let everything happen to us. What's crucial to remember is that it would be traumatizing to do that alone. We need friendship, companionship and mentorship and these come in many forms. There's a skill set involved in getting dinner on the table while keeping our dreams alive.
Love and courage,
Annie
