Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart…
– Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Tag: rainer maria rilke
Rainer Maria Rilke: Let everything happen to you
Let everything happen to you
– Rainer Maria Rilke
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final
Rainer Maria Rilke: Perhaps I want everything
Perhaps I want everything:
– Rainer Maria Rilke, from the poem You see, I want a lot in The Book of the Hours, translated by Robert Bly
the darkness that comes with every infinite fall
and the shimmering blaze of every step up.
Rainer Maria Rilke: Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love
Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.
– Rainer Maria Rilke
Yes, that’s my experience.
What frightens me is already what I am. It’s part of me. It happens within and as me.
And what that part of me wishes for is being respected, loved, listened to, intentionally allowed. It’s very much like a frightened animal.
That doesn’t mean that I won’t act when life and the situation calls for it. I’ll still act in an as kind and wise way as I am able to. For instance, I’ll still support putting some people in prison, although treating them with respect, as fellow human beings, and – if necessary or possible – supporting their transition into more helpful members of society. It’s not about being naive or passive in how we relate to our life and the world. It’s about finding kindness towards the parts of ourselves that are unloved, and also that in the world which is unloved. And the two are really the same.