This morning I pulled my old copy of Ranier Maria Rilke’s Book of Hours off the shelf. I plan on quoting one of his poems in that volume for Sunday’s sermon. I found a note in my hand stuck into the space between pages 56 and 57. It mentioned how my old mentor, the Unitarian Universalist minister Dan O’Neal as he struggled with cancer in the last months of his life had memorized the poem “You, Darkness, of Whom I Am Born.” In these times so challenging to so many, me included, I found it particularly moving.
You, darkness, of whom I am born —
I love you more than the flame
that limits the world
to the circle it illumines
and excludes all the rest.
But the dark embraces everything:
shapes and shadows, creatures and me,
people, nations – just as they are.
It lets me imagine
a great presence stirring beside me.
(translated by Anita Barrows & Johanna Macy)
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