Drawing Near

The Fourth Sunday of Advent. My Advent calendar here is winding down as we get ohsoclose to the Holy Night. Meanwhile it's beautiful outside, 43 degrees and sunny. Like Spring. Greg has these suspect Christmas carols playing that are long drawn out rock guitar solos. They're cracking me up.

I had words for today, but somehow I'm not ready to give them (It's this incessant guitar wailing, I'm sure--it makes me too uppity). So I'll let Rainer speak for me:

Only in Our Doing Can We Grasp You

Only in our doing can we grasp you
Only with our hands can we illumine you.
The mind is but a visitor:
It thinks us out of our world.

Each mind fabricates itself.
We sense its limits, for we have made them.
And just when we would flee them, you come
and make of yourself an offering.

I don't want to think a place for you.
Speak to me from everywhere.
Your Gospel can be comprehended
without looking for its source.

When I go toward you
it is with my whole life.

~Rainer Maria Rilke
(Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy, translators)