Wednesday, July 12,
2017
From one of Rilke’s “Love Poems
to God:”
I want to
unfold.
let no place in
me hold itself closed,
for where I am
closed, I am false.
I want to stay
clear in your sight.
Jesus talks about people wanting
to hide from the light when it comes. Gospel of John, chapter 3:
“The judgment
of condemnation is this: the light came into the world, but men loved darkness
rather than light because their deeds were wicked. Everyone who practices evil
hates the light; he does not come near it for fear his deeds will be exposed.
But he who acts in truth comes into the light, to make clear that his deeds are
done in God.”
Yet consider what Jesus says to
his disciples in Matthew 5:14: “You are the light of the world.”
So consider these pairs:
darkness and light; closed and open; true and false; obscure and clear.
Which are you? Or are you, like
me, a mixture of both from time to time?
What I find interesting is that people
who claim to have nearly died and come back tend to report an experience of moving
towards the light. And that, I think, is what we are all doing, if we so
choose, on this side of death as well. The poet Rilke admits implicitly in
the lines I quote above that he, too, is a mixture of both closed and open and
expresses his yearning for the journey to become more honest, more free, more
unencumbered, more clear.
What is your wish? What is your
yearning?
God bless you!
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