Brian’s Reflection: Thursday, February 24, 2011

All this hurrying soon will be over.
Only when we tarry do we touch the holy.

Rainer Maria Rilke


Ah Rilke. I am so grateful that this poet existed! Well, first of all, what’s the “holy”? I have lots of friends who would never think of using such a word, or acknowledging such a concept. Personally, my thinking has changed over the decades. I used to think in terms of “holy” and “profane”. I don’t anymore. I’ve come to that inner place where everything is holy ….. or profane: - there is no difference. The Universe id what it is ….. and one can either see it as cut up into diverse pieces, or a Unity. Theologically, philosophically, emotionally, psychologically, it seems more sane to me to think of the Universe as a Whole ….. just as I think about myself.

As to “hurrying”. I hurried for decades of my life. And all that hurrying - never leaving enough time for the things to be done in the day, raging when my timing was scuttled by traffic or phone calls, and a million other things - shredded my life and, I think, contributed to my various illnesses. Dennis gets a little edgy because, now that I am “retired”, I don’t “hurry” anymore. I’m not in that mode. I basically drive the speed limit; I don’t do too many things in a day (two at the most). You know what I mean - if you are retired and somewhat hear my age. I am an avid birder; I used to grab twenty minutes to see a migrating bird and be frustrated when it “didn’t appear”. Now, I leave three hours, and just “hang out”; and shrug if the bird had other things to do.

“The holy” has to do with Wholeness, from the Old English “halig”. With not being fragmented, in pieces, torn. It’s very easy to be un-Whole, especially in our modern World where living Life at the upper end in order to have as many goodies as possible entices us with such power.

“All this hurrying will soon be over.” Indeed it will, indeed it will. A friend of mine at age 44 and in “good health” keeled over and dropped dead of a heart attack. Friends’ daughter-in-law died of lung cancer with 3 young children. Seventy-five or more people died in a powerful earthquake in New Zealand. And even if you live eighty years, it will seem short.

Tarry. Tarry. Touch the holy.

Brian+