Consider This: Enfolded By Darkness
An Invitation to Find Faith Where It Can Be Felt
What in your everyday life embraces you holistically?
Too often, we are unaware. Each morning, afternoon, and evening, we experience familiar movements that we hear, taste, see, smell, and touch. We perceive the cool air escaping our fridge as we select our morning eggs, the gradual travels of sunlight through our windows, or the melodic hoots of spring-beckoned owls hiding in the trees. Waves of presence and fullness meet us through these common sensory experiences—light, darkness, water, warmth, wind, and more. Rilke’s poem above pauses to face the bold density of the dark, and he find faith in its presence.
With that, we invite you to consider this:
Reflect on the events of a typical day. What sensory aspects of your day “embrace” you? Choose one of these experiential elements. How does this aspect of ordinary life enliven some facet of your faith or make some truth seem more credible to you?
In light of these momentary reflections, we invite you to craft a poem addressed to this sensory element, exploring its particular embrace throughout your days.
As you go on your way, feel free to share your chosen element in the comments below.
When I turned fifty, I returned to competitive swimming and training for it. Problem: I was forty pounds overweight and all my other numbers were just as concerning. Self-judgment abounded. Yet though I was weak, easily winded, and slow, every day that I went swimming, the water received me unconditionally. Now in my seventies, having returned to some semblance of form, endurance, and speed, it is still the case: in the very here and very now of my bodily existence as a creature of God trying imperfectly to promote shalom in our deeply conflicted world, the water receives me unconditionally. (not a poem, obv)
Longing song of the spring thrush piercing the stillness of dawn.