The Fire Inside
Audio recording here.
In the autumn of 1902 Franz Kappus, barely 20 years old, sat under one of his favorite spots in all of the Military Academy in Vienna - a collection of ancient chestnut trees. In his hands he cradled a book of poems by Rainer Maria Rilke while his chilled toes played with blades of soft grass. Transported to the world painted by Rilke, Kappus didn’t notice when the chaplain of the academy took a seat beside him.
After reaching for the book of poems from Kappus’ hands, thumbing through its pages and settling on a few verses, the chaplain looked up and said, “Well, Rene Rilke, my student, has turned into a poet after all.”
Kappus shares that - inspired by this interaction and touched by the knowledge that Rilke too may have sat under the very same chestnut trees with the very same chaplain - he wrote the towering poet a letter.
He wanted to send Rilke some of his own poems. “Without actually intending it,” Kappus writes, “I found myself writing letters to accompany my verses. In them I revealed my innermost self unreservedly as never before and never since to another person.”
Some say that Rilke too was struck by the likeness between himself and this young poet. And perhaps compelled by that sense of knowing another’s struggle as if it were your own, Rilke responded to Kappus’ letters from his innermost self as well.
In his first response letter Rilke confesses that, despite the request, he will not be offering criticism of the submitted poetry. Instead, Rilke shares that he can only speak to the very challenging process of putting into words one’s deepest experiences and can offer advice as a fellow journeyer of these inner landscapes.
“Things are not easily understood nor as expressible as people usually would like us to believe.” Rilke writes in his first reply to Kappus, “Most happenings are beyond expressing; they exist where a word has never intruded.”
Most happenings are beyond expressing; they exist where a word has never intruded.
I’ve been feeling this way recently - and I imagine many of you have been as well.
Happening after happening throughout these last three weeks have left me struggling to find language that even begins to describe the pile of entangled emotions, thoughts, and responses swirling within. Like Kappus, I struggle to find the right words:
Is it fear? Or anger? Helplessness or Resolve?
The other morning I sat at the kitchen table watching news from the night before.
The first blast was the report that in multiple interviews the spokesperson for the White House - speaking with full conviction and detail - had described a nonexistent terrorist attack in Bowling Green Kentucky.
As I listened I felt my heart drop and my stomach begin to tighten. Is this shock I’m feeling? Or disorientation - a sense of chaos that’s gripped me?
This spokesperson, Kellyanne Conway literally shopped around a story with just the right details to stir fear and fuel the dangerous and chilling state-sponsored propaganda campaign that equates “terrorist” with “Muslim.”
Except, the most fundamental details of this story were made up, they weren’t true, there was no unreported attack in Bowling Green because there was no attack.
At this point I’m a cup-and-half-of-coffee-in and begin the hyperlink rabbit hole. One click leads to another click - hopping from this site to that site - as I try to gain my footing, as I try to wrap my head around news so destabilizing.
Throughout the day I check twitter, I read more news, listen to the radio, have conversations. The stories and faces of sons, daughters, students, artists, babies, scholars - some of whom are fleeing their home countries to literally save their lives - are banned from entering the United States, the very nation that in all likelihood, is at least partly responsible for the instability experienced in their home countries.
I see tears streaming down the cheeks of those painfully waiting for updates on their detained loved ones - and I begin to sink into an overwhelming sadness.
Sadness. How could this be happening? I wonder. The sadness leads to something else - rage maybe? Anxiety? It has heat to it.
I feel squarely in opposition to the cause of what I see and yet naming all the threads that make-up my opposition feels like a Herculean act. But feeling in opposition isn’t actually a feeling at all. What are the pieces of this roiling brew inside many of us right now?
There’s anger and frustration, but also confusion and a sense of chaos, but there’s also resolve and courage and hope. All mixed together it can build a sense of heat within.
It’s as if each emotion and response creates a spark as it knocks up against the other - slowly building a fire inside.
Perhaps your instinct is to watch another news clip or to read another article or another comment on another article, to listen to that TED talk and sign up for the webinar before your meeting - and five other things.
We’re navigating this moment simultaneously as individuals and as a community. And connecting to resources outside of ourselves - whether it’s great journalism, online and offline conversations and meetings, beautiful and inspiring actions - is crucial. It’s that necessary outward-facing piece of our responses.
But, what about the inward-facing piece? How much value are you assigning, how much space are you giving to knowing all the dimensions of that emotional vortex swirling within?
As we try to chart our paths through this wilderness, what is the relevance and role of knowing ourselves as we engage in this work?
Rilke offers some sage advice for us in response to this very question. Although Rilke’s letters are specifically addressed to Mr. Kappus, a young poet, his insights into the human experience apply much more broadly - especially to those trying to do something creative in their lives.
And, friends, I am here to tell you that what it means today to be a voice and a presence for Love, for unity, inclusion, connection, diversity and justice, to be a presence that honors multiple truths, all genders and no gender, to be a voice and presence that aspires to recognize the inherent worth and dignity of every person - to live grounded in these values - requires us to be creative.
It means we are doing something creative in our lives.
By virtue of Siding with Love we are engaged in creative work.
Just like many of us, Mr. Kappus is struggling to find his voice, his place, his orientation, in the midst of tumultuous external and internal realities. Yes, Rilke empathizes with the painful work of parsing out the textures and emotions that make up the ball of fire within. But he also is clear about the path forward.
“Therefore, my dear friend,” Rilke submits toward the end of his first letter, “I know of no other advice than this: Go within and scale the depths of your being from which your very life springs forth.”
Go within and scale the depths of your being from which your very life springs forth.
Reading these words reminded me of an observation offered by a UU activist and teacher I admire. He shared that as he’s observed people at social justice and movement building conferences over the years, he’s noticed that people furiously write down what the speaker is saying and yet most often those very same people don’t give a tenth of that same amount of time to writing down their own thoughts.
"Go within and scale the depths of your being from which your very life springs forth. Advises Rilke - and so many other teachers of the past and present.
For years I’ve had a journal. For the past three or four years I’ve made the same new year’s resolution of writing in my journal a certain number of morning’s a week. And often my morning habit becomes one of reading, of consuming the words of others while my crisp new journal sits quietly on the edge of the table.
It’s hard to go within, to find stillness, and to look at what’s happening inside of ourselves with honesty. To attempt to untangle all of the material.
Finding the practice that protects moments of stillness and quiet in your life will probably look different from the person sitting next to you. And many of you might have rich and established spiritual practices that direct your gaze inward.
For you it might be a meditation or prayer practice. Maybe it’s journaling or art, or long evening walks with just the company of your own footsteps.
Or maybe it’s the quiet offered by a long drive, the steady humming of the road providing a clearing for thoughts and feelings eager to make their way to the surface.
For you maybe it’s a deepening yoga practice.
Or maybe it’s 4 minutes of slow and mindful breathing while your tea steeps in the morning.
Perhaps it is a practice of asking the question, “what am I feeling right now?” after inevitably confronting the next catastrophic news update.
One of the reasons why it is challenging to fit-in these moments of stillness and reflection is because it’s really vulnerable to really sit with our own thoughts and emotions - to stare them straight in the face.
In some sense, it’s more appealing for us to follow the rabbit hole of an online news story than to turn off the computer. Because then we’re left alone with it, left alone with that tightness in the chest and the damp cheeks from fresh tears. Left to fully feel - whatever it is.
Aware of the particular life tragedies and overwhelm experienced by Mr. Kappus and anticipating his reaction to the advice to move toward those feelings and not away from them Rilke offers a gift:
“You must not be frightened, dear Mr. Kappus,” writes Rilke “when a sadness arises within you of such magnitude as you have never experienced, or when a restlessness overshadows all you do, like light and the shadow of clouds gliding over your hand. You must believe that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand. It shall not let you fall.”
You must believe that something is happening to you.
Rilke describes an emotion that emerges within as being akin to a visitor or a guest that enters into our lives with a message of sorts from beyond the present.
By going within and getting acquainted with this visitor - the pang of fear or anxiety - it can shift what it needs to shift, move what it needs to move, expose what it needs to expose - and clear the way for our next few steps on the path toward wholeness and the beloved community.
“Why should you want to exclude any anxiety, any grief, any melancholy from your life, since you do not know what it is that these conditions are accomplishing in you?” asks Rilke.
When these visitors go unacknowledged the growing fire within can consume us and leave us overwhelmed or numb.
But it’s this same fire that if befriended can also be the glowing light that guides our next steps on the path through this thick forest.
Love, is one of those visitors we might be most familiar with in terms of its role as teacher and guide. When Love swells from within it reminds us of our interconnectedness. It serves as a message from beyond, from the larger story that hold us, from the beloved community cheering us on, guiding us in the right direction.
“Life has not forgotten you,” shares Rilke. “It holds you in its hand. It shall not let you fall.”
When we acknowledge and surrender into Love as it swells from within we find ourselves in motion, we’ve made our way to a protest for the first time or we’ve cooked food for the mother of three seeking sanctuary from deportation.
Surrendering into Love, into its wisdom as a teacher, looks like the prayerful stance of water protectors committed to fighting for clean water not just for their own children but for the children of those firing the rubber bullets and water canons in their direction.
Love we know as a teacher. It swirls within and we listen. Perhaps none as great as Love, but there are more guests to know within you and within me and as we set out those welcome mats we might just be guided through this wilderness one step at a time.
May it be so.
We’re going to close our time together today by singing along with Holly Near and friends the song, “I Am Willing” as a way of connecting to ancestors known and unknown who have struggled as we struggle with questions of purpose and direction in times of great uncertainty, risk, and turbulence.