Expansive - The Marvelous Abundance of Being

First off I want to say a big welcome and thank you to the many new subscribers and followers in recent days. Not sure what spurred the new influx but I am so grateful you are here and grateful that what I have shared has spoken to you! Welcome!

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In spite of Fate, the marvelous abundance
of being, like the brimming land
or like stone figures
built into gateways, bearing up balconies.¹

I read this before going to bed on Friday night as my evening reading is from this beautiful book of selections from Rilke. So I went to bed with the phrase, “the marvelous abundance of being” in my heart and mind. But I woke up and spent the first part of my day feeling far from that marvelous abundance of being. Saturday was one of those days when I just woke up feeling blah and several things from the first half of the day further contributed to that feeling. Early on, Scout and I went to the the lake this morning with a hope, at least for me, of experiencing something expansive and I am grateful that we did experience it. It was a morning that, in the hour or so we were walking, shifted greatly in color and feel. We didn’t do a long walk (we only walked about 1½ miles) in that hour as it turned out to be a “Take More Time, Cover Less Ground” kind of walk². Here’s what we saw in the shifting colors:

In the midst there were two heron moments - one photographed above standing in front of the bench and this other one below when it decided I had gotten too close or was just annoying. I love how in the first photo, you see the heron’s mouth wide open as s/he was voicing what sounded like deep annoyance.

I would love to say that I left the lake feeling totally refreshed and renewed by the expansiveness but that wasn’t the case. Some things of the next few hours continued a bit of the blah feeling along with digesting recent news and thinking of the ripple effects that already being felt by me, but even more so by so many others.

The rest of the poem by Rilke really resonates with this feeling. Here’s the whole of it beginning with what I already quoted:

In spite of Fate, the marvelous abundance
of being, like the brimming land
or like stone figures
built into gateways, bearing up balconies.

Or a bronze bell, lifting its voice
over and over against the dullness of our days.
Or that single column in Karnak, standing
long after the temple fell.

Today this extravagance flashes by
in the blur of our haste,
out of the wide yellow day into the vaulted night.

In that rush it dissolves, leaving nothing behind,
just as a plane overhead makes no mark on the sky.
Only our minds see the curve of its flight.³

Here’s one other photo from the last few days - an echo of the spider webs from several posts back. I just loved the energy that looked to be present in the web...

And of course Scout - looking cute and also dropping a pretty solid side eye glance...

Grace, Peace, Love, Hope, and Joy,
Ed

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1. From Sonnets to Orpheus II, 22 quoted in Barrows, Anita; Macy, Joanna. A Year with Rilke: Daily Readings from the Best of Rainer Maria Rilke (p. 234). Kindle Edition.

2. Carrie Newcomer

3. From Sonnets to Orpheus II, 22 quoted in Barrows, Anita; Macy, Joanna. A Year with Rilke: Daily Readings from the Best of Rainer Maria Rilke (p. 234). Kindle Edition.