I believe in all that has never yet been spoken by Rainer Maria Rilke

I believe in all that has never been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me

so that, what no one has dared to wish for

may for once spring clear 
without my contriving.

If this is arrogant God, forgive me
for this is what I want to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river, 
no forcing and no holding back, 
the way it is with children.

Then in the swelling and ebbing currents, 
these deepening tides moving out, returning, 
I will sing you as no one ever has, 

streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.

Book of Hours: Love Poems to God by Rainer Maria Rilke. Translated by Joanna Macy

Abre la Puerta by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Her name is Hope and she’s 12 years old,
going on 20 to life. She is god at 5 feet tall.
Abre la Puerta, open the door
and let her in, give her food.

Old Florence lives in the parking garage
at the university with her bags and packs
on the floor all around and she washes
her 84 year old body in the sink at the library
with a piece of flannel from her deceased husband’s pajamas.
Abre la Puerta, she’s god.
Florence is God, there’s a God named Florencia.

Remember that old abuelita, your grandest grandmother?
How she staggered toward you on legs so thin?
You were just a baby then and she smiled all over your infant self
and when you rose young and steaming from the void
that was God in her abuelita form, crying with joy just to see you,
“Que, que, que babybita” she’d say to you.
“Oh look at you, you babybaby you…”

“Look,” says God, “she talks.” God talks baby talk.
She opened a door in her belly for you.
Your grandmother is God. God is a grandmother

And you remember that red room where you grew? That was God.
And remember the warm hands that received you? That was God.
And you remember your father’s hands holding your face,
as though it were some kind of jewel that might break?
In that moment, he was God.

Your mate who snores, well… God snores, you see.
Your mate is God, who can never find his socks.
And your lover who burns for things you cannot give,
that is God also.

Your mate is God.
God is a housewife in mudface and hair curlers
at the door waving goodbye in a housecoat.
God wears a housecoat.

And, oh, the world that is young and has loved so deeply
and been betrayed, whose skin hangs like rags
and whose arms have no muscle and whose eyes have lost luster;
open the door of your heartaches and step through the door of your betrayal.
Pass through the hole that is left in your heart.

Pass through because it is a door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.

Do you remember that your legs are el anillo, the ring that circles the lover?
Your legs make a door, pass through the door,
Abre la Puerta pass the bulb through.
Open the door, the most sacred of doors,
the trail through your belly and the road up your spine.

 

Remember, fire is a door.
and song is a door. A scar is a door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.

The forest on fire is a door
and the ocean ruined is a door.
Anything that needs us
or calls us to God is a door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.

 

Anything that hurts us,

anything that needs us opens the door.

Abre la Puerta, open the door.

All of these years of seeming indestructibility,
the grandfather of your world dies
and his heart explodes
and yours breaks into a thousand pieces.
These are doors. Open the doors.
Abre la Puerta. Pass through these doors.

The world is a tribe of one-breasted women.
Walk through the door of the scars on their chest.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.

Over the edge of the world you go,
into the abyss. You march in time.
And put the best medicine in the worst of the wounds.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.

The lake in which you almost drowned, that is a door.
The slap in the face that made you kiss the floor, that is a door.
The betrayal that sent you straight to hell, that is a door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.

Same old story, all strong souls first go to hell
before they do the healing of the world they came here for.
If we are lucky we return to help those still trapped below.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.

Hell is a door caused by pain.

 

Opening a flower, rain opening the Earth

the kisses of humans opening the heart of the world

these are doors.

Abre la Puerta, open the door.

 

The scar drawn by razors, that is a door. 

The scars that are doors are opened, are opened.

Abre la Puerta, open the door.

 

The scars drawn by chainsaws across forests, those are doors. 

The poem of new life that comes every dawn,

the soaring of sun, that is a door, the grave is a door. 

The door to hell is a door.

Abre la Puerta, open the door.

Your grandmother, your grandfather,
your mother, your father have died leaving a hole in your life.
Step through that hole. It is an opening.
That hole is a threshold. That hole is a door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.
 

From La Pasionaria, Collected Works, Poetry of Clarissa Pinkola Estes, forthcoming from Alfred A. Knopf. 

Hymn of the Universe by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

'Never, if you work to live and to grow, never will you be able to say to matter, "I have seen enough of you; I have surveyed your mysteries and have taken from them enough food for my thought to last me for ever." I tell  you: even though, like the Sage of sages, you carried in your memory the image of all the beings that people the earth or swim in the seas, still all that knowledge would be as nothing for your soul, for all abstract knowledge is not enough, you must see it, touch it, live in its presence and drink the vital heat of existence in the very heart of reality.

'Never say, then, as some say: "The kingdom of matter is worn out, matter is dead": till the very end of time matter will always remain young, exuberant, sparkling, new-born for those who are willing.

'Never say, "Matter is accursed, matter is evil": for there has come one who said, "You shall drink poisonous draughts and they shall not harm you", and again, "Life shall spring forth out of death", and then finally, the words which spell my definitive liberation, "This is my body".

'Purity does not lie in separation from, but in a deeper penetration into the universe. It is to be found in the love of that unique, boundless Essence which penetrates the inmost depths, deeper than the mortal zone where individuals and multitudes struggle, works upon them and moulds them. Purity lies in a chaster contact with that which is "the same in all". 

'Oh, the beauty of the spirit as it rises up adorned with all the riches of the earth!

'Son of man, bathe yourself in the ocean of matter; plunge into it where it is deepest and most violent; struggle in its currents and drink of its waters. For it cradled you long ago in your preconscious existence; and it is that ocean that will raise you up to God.'

–Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (Priest and Scientist), Hymn of the Universe (Harper & Row: 1965), p.64-65

The Journey by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice-
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations-
though their melancholy
was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice, 

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper 

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do-

determined to save

the only life you could save.

A prayer by Hildegard of Bingen

Holy Spirit,

Giving life to all life,
Moving all creatures,
Root of all things,
Washing them clean,
Wiping out their mistakes,
Healing their wounds,
You are our true life,
Luminous, wonderful,
Awakening the heart from its ancient sleep.

The Invocation to Kali

5.

It is time for the invocation:

Kali, be with us.

Violence, destruction, receive our homage.

Help us to bring darkness into the light,

To lift out the pain, the anger, 

Where it can be seen for what it is -

The balance - wheel for our vulnerable, aching heart.

Put the wild hunger where it belongs, 

Within the act of creation, 

Crude power that forges a balance

Between hate and love.

Help us to be the always hopeful

Gardeners of the spirit

Who know that without darkness

Nothing comes to birth

As without light

Nothing flowers.

Bear the roots in mind, 

Youn the dark one, Kali

Awesome power

May Sarton

Rainer Maria Rilke

How surely gravity's law, 
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the smallest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world.

Each thing --
each stone, blossom, child --
is held in place.

Only we, in our arrogance, 
push out beyond what we each belong to
for some empty freedom.

If we surrendered
to earth's intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.

So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God's heart;
they have never left him.

This is what the things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, 1996
Translated by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows