During the last several days the LCWR has been meeting in Nashville, TN. During one of the presentations Sister Carol Zinn recited the following poem from Rilke's Book of Hours. Personally I love Rilke's stuff and this particular poem reminds me of the way God has worked in my own life. It also reminds me very much of the image I have used in the past year or so regarding God weaving the disparate threads of the stories of our lives together as (he) draws us into the absolute future of his own life. While I hear the images with a distinctive eremitical timbre, I suspect readers here will find they resonate in their own ways with their own lives. Enjoy and please pray for the Sisters as they finish their meetings this week!
Rilke’s Book of Hours, I, 17
She who reconciles the ill-matched threads
of her life, and weaves them gratefully
into a single cloth-
it’s she who drives the loudmouths from the hall
and clears it for a different celebration
where the one guest is you.
In the softness of evening
it’s you she receives.
You are the partner of her loneliness,
the unspeaking center of her monologues.
With each disclosure you encompass more
and she stretches beyond what limits her,
to hold you.
~Rainer Maria Rilke,
translated by Anita Barrows & Joanna Macy
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