Coracle Trust E-Reflections

Let it happen to you: beauty and dread

Tuesday 16 November 2010

Let it all happen to you: beauty and dread. Simply go — no feeling is too much — And only this way can we stay in touch. Near here is the land That they call Life. You'll know when you arrive By how real it is. Give me your hand. Rainer Maria Rilke, God speaks to each of us

Picture: Two crosses, Bridget Macaulay Music: Adagio for strings, Leonard Bernstein I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world. (John 16:33)

Near here is the land they call Life

Even the Disney films tell us that there is no joy without heartache, no fruit without pips, no separating out beauty and dread. Such integration is a feature of midlife spirituality. Feeling both fully was the conclusion too of the Holocaust survivor Etty Hilleshum, to feel it all, but then let it go. I find Rilke's poem very helpful day on day. It reminds me how honest and real and true Jesus and his words are. He dares me to believe that through and beyond felt experience is Life.

The journey smooth and coarse

I may anticipate problems at work and note this instance of shoring up my emotions so that I am not breached, so that dread does not take the upper hand. Most men (and I guess women)live lives of quiet desperation said Thoreau. Walking through life blindfolded to pain is merely, and sometimes a useful, survival technique that ultimately progresses the heart not an inch. I have long valued Bridget's painting of these two crosses. It visually depicts this intersection and touching of both the smooth and the coarse in life; the golden transcendence of beauty and the rough immanence of pain. I imagine now Rilke’s words on the lips of Jesus who is hanging on a coarse rub of wood.