Rilke and God, Part II

from Rilke's Book of Hours
from "The Book of a Monastic Life"
Rainer Maria Rilke
Tr. Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

I come from the soaring
in which I lost myself.
I wa song, and the refrain which is God
is still roaring in my ears.

Now I am still
and plain:
no more words.

To the others I was like a wind:
I made them shake.
I'd gone very far, as far as the angels,
and high, where light things into nothing.

But deep in the darkness is God.

I, 50

Whether it is Rilke himself, or Rilke through translators, he exactly captures some sense of what St. John of the Cross describes in the via negativa.  In the darkness, one finds God.  It is only by not seeking and not possessing that we find and we have.  It makes no sense.  Unless you've been there.

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