Life calmly gives out its own secret

I may write in a day or two, as the Spirit moves, more about my experience in the Easter Triduum. Each of the services had its own character, each was deeply moving in its own way. For now, my brain is and body is weary, and I need a respite from writing. So a poem for the day, a gift from our friend Karen in Tennessee...

“I want a lot.”
By Rainer Maria Rilke

You see, I want a lot.
Perhaps I want everything:
the darkness that comes with every infinite fall
and the shivering blaze of every step up.

So many live on and want nothing
and are raised to the rank of prince
by the slippery ease of their light judgments.

But what you love to see are faces
that so work and feel thirst....

You have not grown old, and it is not too late
to dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out its own secret.

May your new year be filled with blessings, wisdom, love and patience

Lori and I are taking a few days in California to be with family and old dear friends. We saw my mother who is doing much better, and she even went to her annual New Years Eve party with her Cal friends. We are traveling back to Charlottesville today and will be back at St. Paul's on Sunday.

Back in my journalism days, I used to write those "year in review" pieces, and truth be told, I enjoyed doing them. But I will avoid commenting on 2009, or on the decade that is past. It was a difficult year and decade for many of you, and it had many challenges for me. Thank you for your support, wisdom, love and patience (and you know who you are).

It is my prayer that this new decade will be better than the last for our world, for our nation, for you, and for me. May my unemployed and under-employed friends find fulfilling work, may those who are sick be healed, the world end its bloodshed, and those who are anxious find a way to live without fear, and may we all look back on 2010 as the start of great decade.

My friend Diane Reese, who I've known since high school, posted this, and I share it with you:

"Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day."

-- Rainer Maria Rilke.

Spring and the orchards

It was only a week ago we were skidding around the icy streets of Charlottesville and I was posting about snowflakes.

Today Spring arrived. You can smell it in the air.

Somehow, I have always lived near orchards even when living in cities. When I was small, my dad ran a can factory in San Jose, and the orchards were behind our house -- peaches, pears and walnuts mostly. My friends and I spent most of our summers playing in the orchards. Migrants from Mexico came to do the picking.

When I was a young adult I lived in Riverside, east of Los Angeles, and my little rental house was in the last stand of working orange groves in Southern California (now covered with miles of houses). Spring was magical in Riverside, the sweetness of the orange blossoms filled the air, especially in the mornings.

In Sacramento, we lived in a city that floats on a sea of orchards and farms in the Central Valley. The Blue Diamond packers are not far from our house; walnuts and almonds mostly were packed for shipment all over the world. Any trip up or down I-5 takes you through miles of orchards and groves.

And here in Charlottesville, you don't have to drive far to be thick in the apple orchards. We took a drive Friday through Crozet a few miles from here; the orchards are ready for a new season. The trees will soon be in bloom, and there is something Lenten about that. We are not quite at Easter, but ready for the buds to fill the trees. 

So I thought I would share a poem, provided by our friend Karen in Tennessee, who took the time to send this in between all she is doing with a new-born infant at home. The painting that goes with it is by Massachusetts artist Stephen I. Soitos.

Here you are. Enjoy the orchards and the sweet, sweetness of Spring:

The Apple Orchard
by Rainer Maria Rilke

Come let us watch the sun go down
and walk in twilight through the orchard's green.
Does it not seem as if we had for long
collected, saved and harbored within us
old memories? To find releases and seek
new hopes, remembering half-forgotten joys,
mingled with darkness coming from within,
as we randomly voice our thoughts aloud
wandering beneath these harvest-laden trees
reminiscent of Durer woodcuts, branches
which, bent under the fully ripened fruit,
wait patiently, trying to outlast, to
serve another season's hundred days of toil,
straining, uncomplaining, by not breaking
but succeeding, even though the burden
should at times seem almost past endurance.
Not to falter! Not to be found wanting!

Thus must it be, when willingly you strive
throughout a long and uncomplaining life,
committed to one goal: to give yourself!
And silently to grow and to bear fruit.

Too alone, not alone enough

One of the delights in my time, so far, at St. Paul's is leading a class, Journey of Faith, something of a Christianity 101 course for adults preparing for confirmation, reception or reaffirmation. We began in December and concluded with the bishop's visitation in February. Our class was wonderfully fun and the discussion grew more lively every week. 

One of our participants, Maggie Simon Fyfe, introduced us to the poetry of Prague-born Austrian poet Ranier Maria Rilke (he went by "R.M. Rilke"), 1875-1926. Here is one of the poems Maggie read for us, and I share it with you today:

I am too alone in the world, and not alone enough
To make every minute holy.
I am too tiny in this world, and not tiny enough
Just to lie before you like a thing,
Shrewd and secretive.
I want my own will, and I want simply to be my will,
As it goes toward action,
And in the silent, sometimes hardly moving times
When something is coming near,
I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.
I want to be a mirror for your whole body,
And I never want to be blind, or to be too old
To hold up your heavy and swaying picture.
I want to unfold.
I don’t want to stay folded anywhere,
Because where I am folded, there I am a lie.
And I want my grasp of things
True before you. I want to describe myself
Like a painting that I looked at
Closely for a long time,
Like a saying that I finally understood,
Like the pitcher I use every day,
Like the face of my mother
Like a ship
That took me safely
Through the wildest storm of all.