A text exchange between friends \\ 10:45 AM \\ December 18, 2019
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Friend: Checking in on you today – you keep crossing my mind. Wondering how your spirits are, and the sense of “darkness”?
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Me: Lovely timing…
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Friend: Crazy how that works
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Me: The thing about advent is that its a journey from darkness to light…
the dark is uncomfortable at first, and then seductive…a comfy place to stay and brood…the promise of light feels a little too much at first, the light itself a little harsh
And then the memory that the dark is in service of the light and stepping towards it is not fatal but generative
Feeling more on that side of things these days
TMI 😂
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Friend: No!! So good, and as usually happens with ‘lovely timing’, the words coming back my way were hand-picked for today. Thanks David!!
Here’s to stepping towards the light…
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And a few hours later, “friend” sends the perfect poem to encourage me to keep stepping:
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From (Rainer Maria) Rilke’s “Book of Hours”:
God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
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