The Seer (2)
Dear Friends,
We're working today once again with this special poem by Rainer Maria Rilke:
The Seer
In the trees, I see the storms
that, from out of dull days,
beat against my anxious windows,
and I hear the distances say things
that I can't bear without a friend
and can't love without a sister.
There goes the storm, a shape-shifter;
it goes through the woods and through time,
and everything is as if ageless,
the landscape, like a verse in the Psalms,
is earnestness and weight, and eternity.
How tiny, the things we struggle with!
What struggles with us, how vast!
If we, more like things,
let the great storm compel us,
we would grow immense and nameless.
What we conquer is small,
and success itself makes us small.
The eternal, the unique,
does not want to be bent by us.
That is the angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament.
When, in the struggle, his opponents' sinews
stretched out like metal,
he felt them under his fingers
like the strings for deep melodies.
Whomever this angel vanquishes
(and the angel often refuses to fight)
goes forth justified and upright
and mighty, out from that hard hand
that pressed on him as if to mold him.
Victories no longer entice him.
His growth is to be deeply vanquished
by what is ever greater, and then greater still.
We are used to a named immensity: what is this about becoming "immense and nameless"? What is "the eternal, the unique" that doesn't want to be "bent" by us? What is this "what is ever greater"? (By the way, the very last phrase of this translation, "and then greater still," is not in the original German, but highlights Rilke's sense here of the progressive nature of spiritual growth).
When have you had to turn away from something you struggled to obtain, and then found it better so? When has life or another being "won" against you, and you have "lost," and yet you thrive as a result? Please come with an example to share or at least to have in mind.
We are using the poem as a meditation; not exactly for us to meditate its words or images, but rather to find the most inward and outward versions we can of its fundamental gesture.
with love,
Michael
