Spring is officially the best season.
Rainer Maria Rilke’s beautiful poem Go to the Limits of Your Longing contains the striking words:
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.They inspire me to live life in a stance of openness, with arms outstretched to welcome what comes, and the flexibility to absorb the shocks. A position of embrace. However, recently I have been a million miles from that. Rather, I am holding myself in brace position, permanently tensed up and ready to defend myself against the next problem that comes. This is entirely counterproductive, as a rigid structure cannot absorb shocks but rather shatters, and in my case this is being expressed in chronic lower back pain that I don’t seem able to shift.
How I respond to events will not change their essential nature of beauty or terror, but whether I hold myself in brace or embrace position will affect how I live my response. It might help me to live in embrace position if I fully take on board that God is holding me safe in her womb and that a spiritual ‘umbilical chord’ deep inside of me connects me with the Divine, whether I feel it or not.