Earthquakes and tsunamis leaving thousands homeless, missing or dead; the crisis in the Middle East careening pictures into our homes of folk resembling us lying lifeless on streets once filled with shoppers and now functioning as war zones: This is the context in which we struggle to make sense of our relationship to the world, to God and to our lives.
What are we to do? What are we to do? At times like this, optimism is as illusive as pessimism. The former feels naïve and the latter lifeless.
In a recent rebroadcast on NPR, On Being, the poem “Dear Darkening Ground” by Rainer Maria Rilke was read. In it, Rilke makes the earth a metaphor for God. It was a new metaphor for me and it opened me up to a new way of seeing and responding.
Each day’s newspapers were routinely carried to my dining room table. At the same time as I savored my morning coffee I saw pictures of the ruptured earth, beat up, tired, exhausted, blood stained and of terrain cluttered with debris housing steel bridges bent like a child’s plastic toy, I saw a battered God crying out.
“Dear Deafening God” -- words of a poet who cared. How different to address this earth as a metaphor for God, to relate to God needing our compassion, and our tenderness; to feel God’s plead for wars to cease. The ruptures of our earth cry out for all of us together to tend it and to soothe it. Rilke in his poem asks for one more day-today- to live life fully and that means bringing love into each moment, to each person we meet.
He prays: "Just give me a little more time! I want to love the things as no one has thought to love them until they’re worthy of you and real.”
The words spoke to me as I looked out to one more gray day making my way through Lent to Holy Week and Easter.
Let us love deeply in a manner worthy of a Creator God.
Blessings,
Your Pastor, Fran.
PS, You can access Joanna Macy, a translator of Rilke, reading and exploring Rilke’s poem by clicking here.