Widening circles

I’m beginning with Rilke. He’s been a guiding light through the past several years and this year in particular. The Book of Hours (1905) has many poems that resonate with me, and I’m not sure the reason. I’m stopping to listen.

I live my life in widening circles

that drift out over the things.

I may not achieve the very last,

but it will be my aim.

I circle around God, around the age-old tower;

I've been circling for millennia

and still I don't know: am I a falcon, a storm,

or a sovereign song.

The stone that began my own “widening circles” is the Mennonite tradition. Growing up, I often heard Catholics say “Once a Catholic, always a Catholic,” and my circles had not rippled far enough to understand what these Catholics meant. I now know. I’ve traveled far outside my beginnings, and yet I see them within me, very much a part of what I do or say, waiting for a misstep to point out how it does not keep with the way I was raised. I’ve traveled far enough beyond to know I can no longer blame my parents. These thoughts are all mine, or at least enough of mine to own them, to see that they always were my own as much as they are part of where I came from: an extension of that initial kerplunk! that put my life in motion. Eventually, my ripple will reach its end at the bank. How far I’ve come I cannot say. I only know that the energy of the stone is still surging.

Photo by Omar Gattis on Unsplash

At this point, I realize my mind is imaging what Rilke did not. Perhaps his “widening circles” did not occur on a pond’s surface. I am, of course, going to stick with mine. At some point, my ripples are not the only ones present in this space, that they’ll crash into another’s ripples and change them while being changed. Life is not an integer. It’s dynamic, chaotic, and never reflects images well; at least not, until the ripples have all ceased. In death, a person’s life is less refracted, more clearly distinguished by a singular direction - there’s one metaphor - an amalgamation of threads creating a tapestry - there’s a second - a clearer image. And that is where we’re all headed.

Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash

I find that metaphor comforting: life is messy and does not reflect clearly what stands above its waters; death does. How often am I completely befuddled at what I’m seeing of my life, how little of it I can discern while look at its surface. The messy means life’s happening. It’s not a matter of “It’s okay if you cannot see a reflection” but rather “It would be problematic if you did see a reflection.”

I am very much alive and well, circling around God, the age-old tower.