Below is a piece by Rilke, e-mailed to me by a dear one. What follows that is the immediate response. It has come to know itself as Sweater.
“God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.”
Sweater
what walks in me heats me drowning. it is i only for i've given everything to it, including my name.
it cannot say embody me, any longer.
i am inside It and wearing Its clothes.
don't listen to these words. feel me. if this body explodes, don't cry. explosion is the edge of longing surpassed. if only, if only, we are, will be the burning bush. take the heat - like the bomb canister beside the western wall. let's endure it. let me endure and live through the heart of your light. roasted by , eaten by, wide opened by you. which way, i care not. i trust you will have me your way - the way that it happens is yours'. always. always.
G-d's will is the unraveling. we are not the thread, the story, the unfolding little thruline of consequence. i am Its naked body. i am The Hand. i am undone by all that is i. i am what happens. i am the lover. i am open to everything.
kill me.
After seeing this, a rabbi asked if I was okay. Understandable. Toward that concern, I offer clarification:
The death-cry here is an ego-death. Of the oh so little ‘me’ that is the hand held over the eyes, causing doubt as to the Presence of the Sun.
And so it is. D i s s o l v e d into the A l l .
Perhaps a softer way to hear it:
from F.O.A. - Full On Arrival, Alice Frank.