As events unfolded through the latter part of last month, I found myself blowing into my little God Whistle asking for strength.  It was a February of change and challenges that shook me more than anything had for quite some time.  The strength did come and right beside it flowed wisdom and comfort.

I dubbed this last month a period of “Bethie finding her religion”.   There is nothing like situations that metaphorically or literally bring me to my knees to remind me I’m not in charge here and frankly, there’s very little I’m in charge of around here.  And isn’t that a relief?  If I had to rely on myself to spin the planets, orchestrate thousands of different processes in my body, raise the sun, set the tides, we’d be having a lot of chaos in the world.

Often I don’t post about the particulars of the sh*t hitting the fan in my life.  It is found in between the lines of my poems and posts.   What I do tend to write about is the place I finally land, a little stronger, a little wiser and ultimately returning to what remains when all else falls away — that all consuming Love that’s back of Everything.

I’ve not yet reached the point where I’m grateful for all the contrast and challenges when I’m in the thick of it but I know enough now to see that I’m always grateful for the delicious expansion that comes just as soon as I’m willing to take my own hands off the levers of control.  As Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote “in the difficult, are the hands that work on us”.  Yes … the hands … not my hands.  Once again I am reminded of the humility and surrender in a simple prayer: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.  Surrender is so much a part of the fabric of this Universe.  As surely as the day must surrender to the night, so must I give right of way to the “hands that work on us”.

I’m going to post some quotes from A Course in Miracles which played a big part in “Bethie finding her religion” again.  In the ensuing weeks I’ll post some lessons from the workbook.  There is much in ACIM I don’t understand but I’m comprehending more of it than I have in the past and I find the lessons to be so liberating that I believe they actually could be life-changing.

“There will come a time when images have all gone by and you will see you know not what you are.  It is to this unsealed and open mind that truth returns, unhindered and unbound.  Where concepts of the self have been laid by is truth revealed exactly as it is.  When every concept has been raised to doubt and question, and been recognized as made on no assumptions that would stand the light, then is the truth left free to enter in its sanctuary, clean and free of guilt.  There is no statement that the world is more afraid to hear than this.

I do not know the thing I am, and therefore do not
know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look
upon the world or on myself.

Yet in this learning is salvation born.  And What you are will tell you of Itself.”

Chapter 31, V:17

“The truth in you remains as radiant as a star, as pure as light, as innocent as love itself.”

Chapter 31, VI:7

This is the final passage in the text:

“And now we say “Amen.”  For Christ has come to dwell in the abode You set for Him before time was, in calm eternity.  The journey closes, ending at the place where it began.  No trace of it remains.  Not one illusion is accorded faith, and not one spot of darkness still remains to hide the face of Christ from anyone.  Thy Will is done, complete and perfectly and all creation recognizes You, and knows You as the only Source it has.  Clear in Your likeness does the Light shine forth from everything that lives and moves in You.  For we have reached where all of us are one, and we are home, where You would have us be.”

Chapter 31, VIII:12

And finally I leave you with a passage from the poem entitled Today, by one of my favorite poets: William Stafford.

“Religion has touched your throat. Not the same now, You could close your eyes and go on full of light.”

If a sadness rises in front of you,
larger than any you have ever seen;
if an anxiety like light and cloud-shadows
moves over your hands and over everything you do.
You must realize that something is happening to you,
that life has not forgotten you,
that it holds you in its hand
and will not let you fall.

~Rainer Maria Rilke~
Letters to a Young Poet

Here is another “found” poem I have created.  This time I’ve brought Rumi and Rilke together.  No small task!  Great poets they were but not contemporaries as are Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry in my previous found poem.  This particular found poem starts with two lines from a Rumi poem and then alternates with Rilke’s words on the next two lines. This pattern is repeated with Rumi’s words then Rilke’s. No more than 1-3 lines from any one poem is used. There are many ways to create a found poem – this is one way. Below I list the eight poems that were used to accomplish this.

At first I thought: I really can’t do this.  This could be tantamount to blasphemy on some level.  However I’ve recently discovered that God is a cat lover.  When I get to the pearly gates, I’ve got extra credit as well as he’s grading on a curve, so blasphemy I can do a little and still not risk the fantasy suite and hot tub that awaits me.  :)

And now without further adieu, I bring you Rumi and Rilke, together at last.

There’s a surge up from the surface
into what is beyond dying

Like dew from the morning grass,
what is ours floats into the air

It is sunlight slicing the dark
The way the night knows itself with the moon.

Then the knowing comes: I can open
to another’s life that’s wide and timeless

If each of us held a candle there,
and if we went in together,
we could see it.

Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.

Inside this new love, die
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.

The Vigil – Rumi
The Second Elegy – Rilke
All Rivers at Once – Rumi (note: “I am” replaced with “It is”)
In the Arc of Your Mallet – Rumi (note: it is sunlight… and the way the night…, two separate Rumi poems put together in this one verse)
The Book of Monastic Life I,5 – Rilke
Elephant in the Dark – Rumi
The Book of Pilgrimage, II,1 – Rilke
Quietness – Rumi

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me
so that what no one has dared to wish for
may for once spring clear
without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say:
May what I do flow from me like a river
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.

~Rainer Maria Rilke~
Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine,
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them onto fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander on the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.

~Rainer Maria Rilke

excerpted from Ahead Of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose of RMR
edited and translated by Stephen Mitchell

And yet, though we strain
against the deadening grip
of daily necessity,
I sense there is this mystery:

All life is being lived.

Who is living it, then?
Is it the thing themselves,
or something waiting inside them,
like an unplayed melody in a flute?

Is it the winds blowing over the waters?
Is it the branches that signal to each other?

Is it flowers
interweaving their fragrances,
or streets, as they wind through time?

Is it the animals, warmly moving,
or the birds, that suddenly rise up?

Who lives it then? God, are you the one
who is living life?

~Rainer Maria Rilke

~Rainer Maria Rilke
Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry
and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke
Edited and Translated by Stephen Mitchell