Today, something different – in response to this gorgeous image entitled “Conception” by Jaclyn Stuart, we dip into an older poem by a famous poet.
Jaclyn’s painting is part of a body of work she created a few years ago called Advent reflections, which were exhibited in St Andrews during advent. We are so grateful to her for offering them to Proost to use during this season, The image above is entitled ‘Conception’.
The poem we have chosen to follow on in this theme of incarnate becoming is by the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Born into a strict religious family, he came to reject Christianity – he once described God as ‘The cathedral we are building’ – yet he continued to pursue the divine. In one of his poems he describes God as having lost poetry but says that when he comes to his knees the poems quietly flow back to him.
It is perhaps this kind of of fear/courage, faith/doubt, emptiness/presence that resonates so much with our advent longing. It can only be lived, not captured.
“Go to the Limits of our Longing”
by Rainer Maria Rilke, from Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God. © Riverhead Books, 2005.
God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
