Enlarging our Receptivity

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

The conclusion of Rilke’s “Love Poem to God” which we’ve been reflecting on the past few days. Note that in the original, Rilke has “he.” The translators have rendered it as “she.” For our purposes, I am personalizing the verses a bit more by setting it in the first person; these lines are addressed to God:

You are the partner of my loneliness,

the unspeaking center of my monologues.

With each disclosure you encompass more

and I stretch beyond what limits me,

to hold you.

I see this as a description of what takes place during prayer time, no matter what form my prayer may take. When I have emptied my mind, and put my cares aside so that I am alone with God as my partner, then I am not alone at all. Someone, I don’t remember who, once said that “we are never less alone than when we’re alone with God,” and that is a good way of describing God as “the center of my loneliness.”

Sometimes, I speak to God, pouring out my concerns and cares or interceding for others, and God remains at the center, silent as I speak. Nonetheless, I need to move to silence so that I can hear what He may be saying to my heart, imparting a wisdom or some other gift that doesn’t need words to be understood.

God’s “disclosures” to me stretch me beyond my limits; He is so much more than I am or can be, and yet, time and time again, he broadens my horizon, adds to my understand things I never could have understood before, and as I open myself I find that He makes it possible for me to hold him in my heart, perhaps in a way I only discover at the instant it happens.

And what is it that He discloses to me? Well, this morning, at Morning Prayer, I was moved by these verses from Psalm 94 and I share them with you hoping that you may include them in your own moments of prayer and contemplation:

When I think, “I have lost my foothold,”

your mercy, O Lord, holds me up.

When cares increase in my heart,

your consolation calms my soul. (Ps 94:18-19)

And perhaps we can “stretch” here, and begin to grasp that “mercy” and “consolation” are far more than we have thought them to be. Perhaps we can open to accept this work of God in our souls which is so much greater, so much greater, indeed.

God bless you!