AKA: FLARE UP LIKE FLAME AND MAKE BIG SHADOWS I CAN MOVE IN
Retirement is T-minus 1. Technically this past week I was on vacation and today is Sunday, therefore it begins tomorrow.
Everyone asks, "What are your plans for retirement?" I have many, some are more solid than others. Writing is one of them.
Most people - or should I say, those who are fortunate to have enough birthdays - reach this point and need to navigate this part of the journey.
You hear lots of advice:
- Be sure to keep busy!
- Don't sit around all day!
- Relax!
- Take a nap!
- Enjoy it! You've earned it!
For starters I have revisited a poem my younger brother shared with me on the eve of running my first marathon in 2009. It spoke to me then and it speaks to me now. I love the way poems and various writings speak to you differently at various times. Isn't it wonderful?
Today I am embracing the poem's challenge to live life to the fullest. Let's do it together! You in? Buckle up for the ride!
God Speaks to Each of Us
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 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.
Author - Rainer Maria Rilke
God Speaks to Each of Us
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 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.
Author - Rainer Maria Rilke
Wikipedia notes on the poem's author: René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), better known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was an Austrian poet and novelist. He is "widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets".[1] He wrote both verse and highly lyrical prose.[1] Several critics have described Rilke's work as "mystical"
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