GO TO THE LIMITS OF YOUR LONGING
by 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.
published 1905
Not many poets take on the persona of God, but Rilke does. German poet Rainer Maria Rilke assumes the divine voice of God as he imagines what is said to each of us when God launches us into being. The poem is written in the imperative. Do this, do that. "Go to the limits of your longing." "Flare up like a flame." "Let everything happen to you." "[K]eep going."
Since God is speaking to us, we are invited to be listeners. As readers, we are invited to wonder, is this the message I received as I moved into this world? Is this the message my descendants will receive? What does it mean?
We can see that this poem is not tricky. Profound, hopeful, conversational, but not tricky. Each reader of a poem makes their own picture. What you receive from this poem is as valid as what I or anyone else receives.
The picture I see is God sending someone--me or you, our child or grandchild, or someone years' hence, one of our descendants--out of the void and into the world. Maybe the void is our mothers' wombs. Maybe long before that, somewhere in the universe of galaxies. God walks with us to where life begins (the country nearby "they call life") and tells we will know it by its seriousness. Interesting, no? The poet's God sees Life as Serious and we can't go back.
But seriousness is not a bad thing. Surely life is not frivolous. All our thoughts, emotions, the love we give and receive, the losses we face. Yes, life is serious. Yes there is both beauty and terror and no feeling is final. God tells us, "Embody me." Not a casual thing at all. To embody God is profound.
At the same time, there is great feeling in life. We soar sometimes, we reach heights we didn't envision. God tells us to go to the limits of our longing, flare up like a flame. This might sound exciting, or it might sound fearful. How will we find the limits or our longing? Might that take a lifetime? Surely with God's help we can find what we long for. We are told to keep God close, "Don't let yourself lose me." If this frightens us, God offers to take our hand. The last words we hear, dimly, are "Give me your hand."
What I have written is the explication of a poem. There is no magic in that. Many can explicate poems. The magic, or miracle, is that Rilke said all of this in 10 lines. He spoke as the Divine, giving us hope about the terrors we might encounter, reminding us that God walks with us walk hand-in-hand from the moment He sends us into the world. No need to read this explication ever again. But the poem? It's worth rereading, perhaps learning by heart. That way we will remember to make big shadows for God to move in.
Nina Naomi
