In the Hum of Creation

I'm in the hum of creation, writing down to my soul. The currents of the mystery are pulling me down and down. To what, I don't know. But my body and mind are gladly going with them. The ride isn't smooth. Inspirations are crashing into me and I'm banging into them. Preconceived ideas are rattling loose, stripping away what I know, revealing wellspring energies surging into form.

In this hum of creation, I'm diving again and again. Plunging into the unknown, I'm making the crazy attempt to translate what cannot be grasped into words and images that describe the indescribable. I'm swimming toward pearls that prove nothing while opening to everything. Why? This is what I'm called to do, beginning of story.

Within the hum of creation, the world is crashing—nuclear meltdown, revolution, battles for freedom and campaigns to take it away. Everywhere, voices are crying, "Help us." They call me from the depths. I burst through the surface, look around and stare in stunned silence at the scene. "What's the best way to help?" my heart aches. No answers come.

Then the hum of creation pulls me back down. In the currents, I look for ways to see the way through radiation to radiance, through revolution to renewal. Will I find them for myself or anyone else? I dive again, pray what I do will make a drop of difference and remember the lines of the poet:

What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

When we win it's with small things,

and the triumph itself makes us small.

What is extraordinary and eternal

does not want to be bent by us.
I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:
when the wrestler's sinews
grew long like metal strings,
he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.

Whoever was beaten by this Angel

(who often simple declined to fight)

went away proud and strengthened

and great from that harsh hand,

that kneaded him as if to change his shape.

Winning does not tempt that man.

This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively

by constantly greater beings.

THE MAN WATCHING by Rainer Maria Rilke