Terror of the Edges

Unknowing before the heavens of my life
I stand in wonder. O the great stars.
The rising and the going down. How quiet.
As if I didn't exist. Am I part? Have I dismissed
the pure influence? Do high and low tide
alternate in my blood according to this order?
I will cast off all wishes, all other links,
accustom my heart to its remotest space. Better
it live in the terror of its stars than
seemingly protected, soothed by something near.

(Rainer Maria Rilke: Uncollected Poems, translated by Edward Snow [New York: North Point Press, 1996], 55)

I read Rilke to be in the company of someone who is willing to search his own interior world with fierce honesty. Mary Oliver pays keen attention to the outer world. Rilke knows the inner landscape. (Perhaps I admire Hopkins because he bridges the two!)

Who among us would dare to consider his/her own life as being heaven-like, a vast mystery that could never be completely known? Who could exhaust the exploration of such a life-galaxy? Yet, Rilke stands before his own immensity and says, "I stand in wonder."

As I listened to this poem speak to me this morning, I heard Rilke's relentless exploration, his preference for living out toward the "terror" of the edges of his own universe rather than settling safely at home, "soothed by something near" and known. I have the sense that at least for him, he preferred playing the prodigal rather than staying home as the elder brother, never journeying off the farm.

If I open myself to the truth of these words, where do I find myself? To "accustom my heart to its remotest space" is to find my heart in the exploration, to live most fully and truly my "one wild and precious life" (with thanks to Mary Oliver).

To live safe, protected, "soothed by something near" is not living, at least not for me. I've been there, done that. So how do any of us live out our own vocation? the mystery of our own lives? the immensity of our own being?

Surely these words have much more work to do within me. But cued by Rilke today, I approach the mystery of my own life, pause to notice its immensity, take off my shoes as on holy ground, and stand in wonder before it.

There are any number of formulas for "successful living" that I hear day to day. Many of them appear very sound, some of them highly religious, and most always they carry the promise of blessing and "success." But so often, when life becomes unsettled or too immense, those formulas stop working. Seldom do I hear folks talking about wonder and awe, and the grace to embrace the immensity of one's own existence. The grandeur of a life is not some problem to be solved, but a mystery that we step into.

The holy ground, the endless universe is my life, my being. And rather than get stuck in a place that is narrow and protected and "near," I move outward to the edges of exploration, to the "terror of the stars" at the far end of my own galaxy.