Even before the calendar marks the beginning of Autumn next week, we already know something is underway. One senses a subtle shift in mood: the angle and quality of light and diminishing daylight betrays the warm summer temperatures. It is no longer Summer, yet, it is not quite Fall. I noted that some of the trees had given way to this shift with changing leaves, in evidence since August. It's the time of year when personal reflection comes more easily and naturally for me, too; I reflect on personal goals, hopes, dreams.
In this episode I referenced Rainer Maria Rilke's series of poems called The Book of Hours, its title coming from the book from which monks chant the canonical hours. Here's one of my best -loved excerpts:
I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world. I may not complete this last one but I give my life to it.
I circle around God, around the primordial tower. I've been circling for thousands of years and I still don't know: am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song?
I also referenced Thomas Merton and The Seven Storey Mountain, written during his first years at Gethsemani and is a moving, spiritual autobiographical account of Merton's search for faith. Merton has written numerous moving works, including poems. This one, which alludes to the canonical "time of day" is from his book of essays and poems, No Man is an Island:
There must be a time of day when the man who makes plans forgets his plans, and acts as if he had no plans at all
There must be a time of day when the man who has to speak falls very silent. And his mind forms no more propositions, and he asks himself: Did they have a meaning?
There must be a time when the man of prayer goes to pray as if it were the first time in his life he had ever prayed, when the man of resolutions puts his resolutions aside as if they had all been broken, and he learns a different wisdom:
Distinguishing the sun from the moon, the stars from the darkness, the sea from the dryland, and the night sky from the shoulder of a hill.
