Page 3: Rainer Maria Rilke – Prayers of a Young Poet
Rilke, after all, is a poet of glimpses. And just when you think you’ve glimpsed and grasped something concrete in him…his words turn and pull your gaze in an utterly different direction. Perhaps this is because, to Rilke, and his monk, God is utterly expansive. This is no book for the typical American Sunday School classroom. God is expansive, demanding yet deeply compassionate. God is dark, yet gentle. And we, the creatures of God’s hand, are groping—even after many years devoted as a monk—for just a glimpse…when the vision has been there all along.
Perhaps the most famous poem of Rilke’s prayers is also the most illuminative of his sense, and the beautiful project that is his work:
God speaks to each one of us only before we’re made,
then wanders with us silently out of the night;
but the words uttered before each beings,
the misty words, are these:
“Go, you who are sent out by your senses;
go out to the boundary of your yearning;
clothe me with a garment.
Grow like a fire behind things
so that their shadows, spreading all about,
cover me always and utterly.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and dread.
one must only go; no feeling is too remote.
Don’t let yourself part with me.
Near is the land
you call life.
You’ll recognize it
by its earnestness!
Give me your hand.” [60]
———-
Caitlin Michelle Desjardins is a student in Theology at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. She enjoys all forms of the written and spoken word and drinks copious amounts of tea.
C. Christopher Smith is the founding editor of The Englewood Review of Books. He is also author of a number of books, including most recently How the Body of Christ Talks: Recovering the Practice of Conversation in the Church (Brazos Press, 2019). Connect with him online at: C-Christopher-Smith.com
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