Rilke on Feeling and Solitude

Alone with the Strange Thing

Dear Friends & Family,

What a week to begin a three-week offline intermission and writing retreat, what with the news.

What a week for the sky to fall and Sweet Petunia¹ to sprout a sprinkler system inside, prompting major (urgent) roof repairs. But first, more rain.

And a whole lot of hand-wringing, and laundry. And fans running on high and not high enough. And a few choice words I failed to whisper.

Maybe the sky is falling on your little circle of earth. Rilke lends a hand in this week’s passage.² My sense is we can take our pick with the feeling tone that comes as the strange thing. Don’t limit it to grief. Overwhelm and angst will do just fine here. The point is bearing the depths of feeling and letting something come.

He gives us no easy task. But he gives us good direction—direction that may spark a little discomfort, if not reaction.

In the days ahead, if you are so inclined, do share your reflections on this passage in comments, and enjoy those of one another. I will circle around to them soon.

With love,

Renée

blue surf sand dollar after the tide turn ©Renée Eli

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Alone with the Strange Thing

I believe nearly all our griefs are moments of tension. We perceive them as crippling because we no longer hear signs of life from our estranged emotions. We are alone with the strange thing that has stepped into our presence. For a moment everything intimate and familiar has been taken from us. We stand in the midst of a transition, where we cannot remain standing.

And this is the reason the sadness passes: the something new within us, the thing that has joined us, has entered our heart, has gone into its innermost chamber and is no longer there either—it is already in the blood. And we do not find out what it was. One could easily make us believe that nothing happened; and yet we have been changed, as a house is changed when a guest has entered it. We cannot say who came; we shall perhaps never know. But many signals affirm that the future has stepped into us, and [. . .] long before it manifests itself outwardly.

Therefore it is so important to be alone and observant when one is sad. The seemingly uneventful moment, when our future really enters in, is very much closer to reality than that other loud and fortuitous point in time, when it happens as if coming from outside. The quieter and more patient, the more open we are when we are sad, the more resolutely does that something new enter into us, the deeper it is absorbed in us, the more certain we are to secure it, and the more certain it is to become our personal destiny. When it “happens” [again] at a later time—when it becomes obvious to others—then we feel an intimate kinship with it. And that is necessary. It is needed, and our evolvement will gradually go in that direction: nothing strange shall befall us, but rather that which already for a long time belonged to us.³

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Gathering in Silence

All are welcome at August’s Gathering in Silence followed by conversation on silence and this month’s theme, solitude.

During our orientation, we will explore pathways into silence and silence as a companion presence.

Register by email: reneeeliphd@substack.com OR reply to this email.

[While on this intermission, I am slow to respond, but know that I will!]

1. Sweet Petunia is my vanhome.

2. For you who are new, while on intermission, I offer these Sunday letters as passages from others, returning to regular Sunday letters in a few weeks.

3. Rainer Maria Rilke, “The Eighth Letter,” in trans. Joan M. Burnham, Letters to a Young Poet (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2000), pp. 74–76, emphasis original.