Circling Around God

I live my life in growing orbits
which move out over the things of this world.
Perhaps I can never achieve the last,
but that will be my attempt.

I am circling around God, around the ancient tower,
and I have been circling for a thousand years,
and I still don't know if I am a falcon, or a storm,
or a great song.

~Rainer Maria Rilke (trans. R. Bly)


This is where I begin. This is where I am going.

I don't intend to make this a very personal blog. I am not interested in confession or memoir or exhibition. Making the personal meaningful is hard and one needs considerably more talent -- and far less ego -- than I possess to make it work.

What I love is the way the Soul speaks, the images with which it cloaks itself, and the magnetic force with which it draws us to that mysterious center which is both our self and the world. I love the infinite ways that God manifests in the world and the many forms of worship and praise that humans have devised that attest to God's presence and power. Mostly, I love those God-drunk lovers who, like Rilke, keep circling around God until they break into song.

This blog is about listening to that song. It is not about anything that I have to say, which would not be very interesting, anyway, given the relatively few years of experience I have acquired as against the Soul's thousands of years. No, I would rather hear from that great Other -- call it God, the Soul, Love, what have you -- and try to simply and humbly respond.

I don't believe that it is the essential thing that we finally come to know whether we are "a falcon, or a storm, or a great song." It's not as important what we are transformed into, but that we become transformable, that our fixed notions of ourselves dissolve, become more fluid, more flowing. It is not important on this journey -- if it is even possible -- that we ever arrive. It's the circling that counts, spiraling wider and wider out "over the things of this world." And that is my hope and intention for this blog, to keep circling until I can more clearly hear that great song that the mystics call the Beloved and peoples everywhere have always called God.

And maybe sing along.