Tag Archives: Freedom

A Widening Circle

Am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song? - Rilke

Finding freedom is an odd dance.
Look how the black squirrel hops along the lawn
or how the turkey vulture floats in the air
or how a dog pants after chasing its tail.
Is my freedom of a greater or lesser variety?
The very power to choose is a given
yet always in freedom there is the refusal
of a choice presented on life's plate.
I could circle around God and the towers of old
for thousands of years as if I inhabited a Rilke poem
but my days are numbered differently
and sometimes the circles in which I move
and have my very being narrow to a point.
I give myself to reaching out across the world
with a promise to return to where I began.
Rilke gave himself willingly to it all.
I still don't know.

(Thank you to Joanna Macy's translation of Rainer Maria Rilke's "Widening Circles.")

No Longer Home

Words hurled into the world
from frothing lips under crazed eyes
still make the little ones cry.

They must go home
where better days were never known
escaping once and never again.

Rain came last night
falling through the frozen air
coating trees and walks with an icy shield.

Everyone will be slipping on the way
as the day where dreams were assured
slips further behind their tentative steps.

The last cries of the prophets:
Prepare your provisions!
Cross the river!
The Promised Land waits no more!
Were always just a dream.

And the child holding your hand
asks with tears on their cheeks,
Is home no longer home?

Eventually

No, not ready at all
to feel the deep earth
resonate, they said
as they marched
in time to the rising
and the setting of the sun.
Perhaps tomorrow
the line will practice
meandering just a bit
from the center 
holding disparity 
tightly together.
Someone will
eventually
step aside
to intentionally collect
what the others 
have left behind.
And, perhaps, then,
the disquiet of each heart
will begin to be heard.

“I AM has sent me to you.” – Exodus 3:14

God of Now and
God of Then and
God of Will Be,
who endlessly appears in the corners of our eyes,
burning,
in a bush, in a smile, in a picture and
in the alighting of a falcon in a tree;
we imagine your name in our imaginings
and find our thoughts far too narrow and small 
for pure being to settle into us in these dizzy days;
send us into the realm of corners where we dare 
to believe nothing is true and sacred and,
burning,
we may be seen rising in our finest moment of freedom.
Amen.

“But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” – John 21:18

God who draws us out of the waters
and leads us across the land,
the shape of our lives blurs
as meanings grow dim
and the birds no longer sing
in the light of the mornings.
We cry, This is not of our own doing,
and we pray, Lead us not into temptation,
but we hold out our hands anyway
to be bound by that which is greater
than us...but not you.
Free us once again.
Amen.