Month: September 2024

The Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 – 1926) has a fascinating little book titled, Letters to a Young Poet.

At the heart of the book is an aspiring young poet’s request to Rilke to let him know whether he ought to be a poet or not.

The young poet is insistent, sending copies of poems he has written.

At one point Rilke writes

“ . . . .  I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within yourself the possibility of shaping and forming as a particularly happy and pure way of living; train yourself to it – but take whatever comes with great trust, and if only it comes out of your own will, out of some need of your inmost being, take it upon yourself and hate nothing.”

Perhaps Rilke’s advice is advantageous for us, given the question in today’s Gospel (Mk. 8: 27 – 35)

“Who do you say I am?” (Mk. 8:29)

‘Try to love the question’ – who do you say I am?

‘Live the question’ – who do you say I am?

And live along some distant day into the answer.

Rilke’s final words of advice to the young man, perhaps had been written for us “and after all I do want to advise you to keep growing quietly and seriously throughout your whole development; you cannot disturb it more rudely than by looking outward and expecting from outside replies to questions that only your innermost feeling in your most hushed hour can perhaps answer.”

Keep growing quietly and seriously.

Don’t look outside for answers to questions “that only your innermost feeling in your most hushed hour can perhaps answer.”

 

My name is James, the son of Anna and Barnabas.

Being completely deaf, I was deprived of so much that others take for granted.

I had never heard my parents call my name.

I had never heard the shouts of children at play, the song of a bird, of the wind in trees, the ocean as it fell upon the shoreline.

I never heard a word of comfort or encouragement.

The fact that I was practically dumb as well added to my sense of deprivation and isolation.

And when you are different, people, often, are afraid of you. People avoid you. People hurry past you.

I was full of self-pity.

One day a man came to my village, I couldn’t hear his name, but I could tell from his dress he was a Jew.

What on earth was he doing in a Gentile village in the Decapolis?

Many of those from the village gathered around him.

I followed them.

Many of the villagers looked at me with scorn, “What are you doing here?” their eyes said, ‘you should have stayed at home” the grimace on their face declared.

This man took me aside from the crowd and gave me all his attention.

Now, I felt important.

He did not speak to me as it would have been a waste of words.

Instead, he touched me. A tender, patient, loving touch.

He made me feel what I couldn’t hear.

Then he put his finger into his mouth, touched mine, and said, “Be opened!”

And I was!

I heard children laughing, birds singing, the wind in the trees. And I laughed with the children and sang with the birds.

Why am I telling you this?

I discovered many new things in the months that followed.

My first discovery was that a touch offered in love heals!

Also, I learned that many people listen without hearing; many have loose tongues that would be better tied; many have ears to hear, and tongues to proclaim.

But why proclaim if no one is listening? And at times all are proclaiming so loudly that no one can hear.

Hearing and speech are great gifts. They are heart gifts.

It is only with the heart that we can listen rightly, and only with the heart that we can speak truly.

You know the very best thing about receiving my hearing? I heard my Mother and Father call my name!

And the very best thing about receiving my speech? I could proclaim, “I love you!”