23 Comments
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Jamie Millard's avatar

We can never trade mystery for mastery. In the darkness, there are no shadows. That’s where we find our own light. Rilke always seems to get there first.

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Maha's avatar

Thank you for that astute and beautifully articulated observation.

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Kaitlyn Rightmyer's avatar

There is no mystery, without mastery, and there is no mastery, without mystery.

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Maha's avatar

Rilke has been a teacher of mine for many years, so steeped in beauty and truth and terror he is.

I have this reflection of his above my desk for frequent consideration:

“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.

Just keep going. No feeling is final.”

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Taishin Michael Augustin's avatar

Ah, Rilke! Wonderful. I’m slowly reading his Letters to a Young Poet, which display the same care and craft, coupled with insight.

These lines I’ll carry with me today:

feel how your breathing makes

more space around you

With a bow of gratitude … 🙏

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Maha's avatar

Thank you. I’ll carry it as well.

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Daniel Henderson's avatar

Pretty much took the words out of my mouth!

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Paul Wittenberger's avatar

My favorite of all Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus, no matter the translation.

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Jamie Millard's avatar

We can never trade mystery for mastery. In the darkness, there are no shadows. That’s where we find our own light. Rilke always seems to get there first.

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Karen Kenworthy's avatar

Wow! - “In the darkness there are no shadows.” What an interesting observation and metaphor.

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Daniel Henderson's avatar

Yes! Had to read it twice before it really hit.

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Sloan Bashinsky's avatar

Amen.

Without mystery, it would be pretty darn boring, and what would be the point?

Everything said, written or even thought ends up in some kind of record, somewhere, like a giant library.

Spider Woman is a tad larger than the internet web

Looking hard in the mirror is quite different from looking elsewhere.

The fearless searching moral inventory is not a best seller most places, but moves adventuresome souls faster than the speed of light.

The second fastest way to move backward is to become a programmed robot, and the first fastest way is to then join a herd..

Decartes finally figured out that he existed by saying, I think, therefore I am.

A broken heart proved many times that I existed, as did get hitting with a line drive in the balls when I was 11, and my infant son dying of crib death, and quite a few other emotional things.

I don’t need to think, to know I exist, but darn if thinking hasn’t caused me a lot more problems than feeling.

I think I’m gonna have me a good cry some day about why my soul wanted to have so many painful experiences this time around, but then, there were lots of wonderful moments, too.

But every time I planned, God seemed to laugh.

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Lisa B. Martin    zihuawriter's avatar

Another fine selection as I watch ice going out on a Wisconsin lake, reflections visible again, hear a multitude of birdsongs, and breathe. Ahhh.

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jude's avatar

rilke. brilliant.

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Writer Pilgrim by So Elite's avatar

There are many bell towers. Can you hear them call?

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Bobbe Nunes's avatar

Stunning

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Suzanne Andrews's avatar

On October 27, 1925, Rilke wrote “a few personal requests” in the event “of some illness which would more or less remove me from my own jurisdiction.”

And Rilke’s self-chosen epitaph, which has given rise to numerous interpretations, reads:

Rose, o pure contradiction, desire

To be no one’s sleep beneath so many lids.

Rose, oh reiner Widerspruch, Lust

Niemandes Schlaf zu sein unter soviel

Lidern

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Spreek ook jij's avatar

"In the darkness, there are no shadows. That’s where we find our own light."

To these wise words, I can only close my eyes and be silent.

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Mark Baird.'s avatar

Well worth aa coffee

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Tank Green's avatar

Fuck.

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Patrick Jeitz's avatar

I am, we are, it is. 🙏🍀 Thank you

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Suzanne Andrews's avatar

"Most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered"

Rainer Maria Rilke

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