Tag Archives: Rainer Maria Rilke

The Leaves Are Falling

By Robin Bates | Published: September 21, 2019

Rilke says that, like the leaves, we all are falling. But “there is one who holds this falling/endlessly gently in his hands.”

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Dig into Yourself for a Deep Answer

By Robin Bates | Published: August 17, 2019

Spiritual Sunday Former Sewanee chaplain Tom Ward has given me permission to share a wonderful sermon that he delivered recently at Otey Parish. A former English major, Tom compared the disciples asking Jesus how to pray (Luke 11:1-13) to the young aspiring poet who asked Rainer Maria Rilke for advice. The resultant letters, published as […]

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What Drives You to Go Forth?

By Robin Bates | Published: March 30, 2019

Spiritual Sunday The prodigal son is one of Jesus’s most challenging parables. I once read about a rightwing Christian arguing that Jesus had it all wrong since the story’s outcome violated her views about who deserves to be helped, whether by God or the government. Writers have had their own interesting takes. Andre Gide, tormented […]

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What I Heard Was My Whole Self

By Robin Bates | Published: January 13, 2019

Spiritual Sunday Today’s Gospel reading concerns Jesus’s awakening as he was being baptized by John. That moment was his own epiphany, when the membrane between the sacred and the profane was penetrated and he realized that God dwells within us (Luke 3:21-22): Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been […]

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The Eternal Doesn’t Want To Be Bent by Us

By Robin Bates | Published: October 15, 2016

Rilke draws on the story of Jacob and the Angel in his poem “The Man Watching.” We grow, he writes, by “being defeated, decisively, by constantly greater beings.”

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And a Woman Said, “Tell Us of Pain”

By Robin Bates | Published: October 17, 2014

Is Kahlil Gibran right in seeing pain as a road to enlightenment. Or is this just wish fulfillment?

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We All Are Falling

By Robin Bates | Published: October 27, 2013

A spiritual poem by Rilke about falling leaves.

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A Time for Silence

By Robin Bates | Published: August 25, 2013

Silence can be a very powerful response to tragedy.

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God Speaks to Us Before We Are

By Robin Bates | Published: July 28, 2013

When we are plunged into our bodies, we lose connection with God. In this poem, Rilke explores how to reconnect.

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