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Go to the Limits of Your Longing
Rainer Maria Rilke
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.
(source: https://onbeing.org/poetry/go-to-the-limits-of-your-longing/)
I fell in love with a phrase in Latin, solvitur ambulando, which translates “It is solved by walking.” When I say that walking has helped my faith develop, I do mean that literally - there are many days where going for a walk combines the departure from the site of my ruminations, physical exertion, and being surrounded by nature in ways that ground me and bring me a healthy new perspective on a problem. God speaks to me through doing something other than whatever came before, whatever had me stuck in a mental trap.
I also believe that walking with God is an apt metaphor for what faith looks like in times of trouble and doubt, where we feel our way forward without much of a point of reference except that 1. We aren’t going to quit and 2. We have God’s hand in ours. Being accompanied on a walk, even a walk through experiences that feel terrible and final, can make continuing forward easier.
When I read Rilke, I do get a heady feeling of longing, one where we want to embody all that God has for us and we’re perhaps scared to move, stuck in familiar patterns and afraid that we won’t ever flare up and create big shadows where God can move. I am comforted that He isn’t sending us out into the challenges of every morning alone: we go with Him, and we strive not to fall behind or run ahead, instead working not to let ourselves lose Him. A walking pace feels too slow some days and too fast on others; the steadiness of a walk with God, though, brings me comfort as we keep trying to learn the way.
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