Attending to the Interior

Only that which is interior is near; everything else is far away.
And this interior is dense and every day
overfilled with everything, and entirely unspeakable.

(From Rainer Maria Rilke, "The Island")


The Christian spiritual path invites us to a deeper attentiveness and love in four specific realms. We are invited to attend more deeply to God, to self, to others, and to the created world.

I find the most challenging realm for myself and others is that of attending to and loving myself. We tend not to do this well. We don't see ourselves honestly. We wear self-blinders. It's not that we intentionally deceive ourselves, but to see ourselves as we truly are requires an unflinching honesty that can be painful. Such seeing, though, is a crucial part of the spiritual journey.

Noverim te, noverim me, St. Augustine prayed. "May I know you, may I know myself."

The interior of our lives, however, is the context we cannot afford to overlook. Too many times we seek to find ourselves in the outer world, named by what we produce or how others estimate us. We identify with a particular tribe, group, or symbol of status. We accumulate symbols of well-being that we think will label us . . . titles and possessions and accomplishments.

All of those things, though, are exterior to what is most real, to who we truly are. Rilke says that what is within us, the interior of our lives, is dense and so full of "every day's everything" that we cannot even speak of it accurately. This inner density is dark and light, cloudy and clear, obvious and mysterious. No wonder we are hesitant to explore it!

This is not an invitation to intense introspection that shuts the world out. This is not a "navel-gazing" that displaces God with my own self or ego at the center of life -- I am never the center! This is not a narcissism that looks out only for itself while the rest of the world struggles and laments.

It does, however, seek to become familiar with its own landscape as a way of becoming whole, as a way of seeing clearly, and as a path to healing the pain of the world.

Becoming familiar with my own density means that I begin to recognize the ways that I offer my own unique toxicity to the world. Knowing my own toxicity, I'm more able to open myself for healing and wholeness.

It also means that I come to know the unique gifts and charisms that are mine to offer the world. If I don't offer myself for the healing and well-being of the world, no one else can offer me. Only I can offer myself, my own density, in that way.

"May I know You, may I know myself."