Impermanence

Philosopher and poet, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote the following on impermanence in a letter to Witold Hulewicz, November 13, 1925:

“Impermanence plunges us into the depth of all Being. And so all forms of the present are not to be taken and bound in time, but held in the larger context of meaning in which we participate.  I don’t mean this in a Christian sense (from which I ever more passionately distance myself) but in a sheer earthly, deep earthly, sacred earthly consciousness: that what we see here and now is to bring us into a wider – indeed, the very widest – dimension.  Not in an afterlife whose shadow darkens the earth, but in a whole that is the whole.”

Questions and Answers

We seem to be hearing answers to vital questions that we may have never actually asked. Every day this relationship message comes verbally or visually via our televisions. “We’re in this together.” We readily admit that no one is an island. Our present reality has forced us to recognize that we are interdependent. Have we ever actually asked, What does it mean to be a member of the human race? Or What do we mean to each other? As the number of deaths continue to rise, we realize the fragility of our human species. Our treasured ideal of rugged individualism may have blinded us to how easily life can be shattered. And so our common brokenness, calls us to rely on the only permanent strength we can know, the God who never leaves us.

Impermanence and Imagination

As each loss speaks about the importance of connections, we found imaginative answers to the impermanence of ways to gather. Sunday Mass, our primary gathering as Church has moved online. Joining together to worship in this new way changed our focus from the reception of the Eucharist to another way of being fed. Therefore the message (the preaching) about God’s real presence with us and within us has become a new necessary food. And we are encouraged to go for deeper answers to our deepest questions. What do we believe in? How do we want to live into the future?

Impermanence calls us to imagine new ways of understanding the kingdom as kin-dom. Can I imagine a new way of being church based on the equality of members rather than on power created by position and privilege? Imagine pastoral care based on qualifications rather than ordination. Imagine a welcoming church open to membership not based on rules of inclusion versus exclusion. 

How Will I Change?

Rilke invites us to keep placing all our questions in the larger context for the sake of clarity. How will our resources, gifts, and lives need to be used by God for the good of the whole? Has my emptiness caused by giving up, letting go of, doing without, been filled with prayer and dependence on God? Have my habits of buying and gathering defined my needs and put in correct context my wants? And is my being more fully alive through empathy and compassion?

Can I now hear and see more clearly the invitation into realms beyond but shared by our common humanity? Do I have a new depth of understanding of those who revolt because they are hungry in Lebanon? Can I feel the abandonment of those without health care in Africa? Do I know the grip of fear from the likelihood of being shot dead from judgement in Georgia?

We are called to imagine a new way of living. We are called to change our future.