Monthly Archive for July, 2009

The Passion of David Bazan

Published on July 31, 2009 by David Driedger. 1 Comment Tags: .

I came across this great arti­cle on the life and faith(?) of David Bazan.  Here is a post I wrote for my old blog on my own expe­ri­ence with this great per­former in rela­tion to my own min­istry expe­ri­ence.  The post was orig­i­nally titled ‘Min­is­ters of Death’

I sus­pect you can guess who I am (with my star struck eyes) and who Bazan is (appar­ently chew­ing tobacco or something).

I have been lis­ten­ing to Bazan’s music for some ten years now. His music has always rep­re­sented a brave and engaged crit­i­cism of Chris­t­ian reli­gion. What sets his approach apart from more reac­tionary crit­i­cism is how hon­est he remains in his own sense of hope­ful­ness to the spirit of faith. After the show I talked with him and asked if he kept any per­sonal ties to the church. He said that his wife and daugh­ter attend church but that he had ‘made his exit’ (adding a com­ment of it being a hope­ful exit; I think is how he put it). Hav­ing grown up as a pastor’s kid he has tried to dis­tance him­self from the insti­tu­tion with an attempt to sus­pend his received assump­tions. What remains is still a sense of God’s exis­tence, which in his words has cre­ated a strong dis­so­nance to where he thought he was going (athe­ism). He admits that this could sim­ply be the result of such an entrenched world view that he received grow­ing up. I would have liked to talk longer.
David Bazan remains for me a of min­is­ter of death. A min­is­ter in the truest sense (though prophet may be a more appro­pri­ate term) in that his engage­ment with the social impli­ca­tions of faith and reli­gion remain sig­nif­i­cant in his work. The role of death func­tions promi­nently in much of his lyrics whether it is phys­i­cal death, the death of a rela­tion­ship or the death cer­tain beliefs. To those in the church who will lis­ten this min­istry of death injects needed per­spec­tive and the pos­si­bil­ity of change and move­ment.  I believe it was Flan­nery O’Connor (or some­one speak­ing about her work) who said that the rea­son an artist focuses on death is because death is ‘gett­gin some­where’.  In tran­si­tion to the sec­ond sig­nif­i­cant event of the week (when this post was writ­ten) here are his lyrics to “Priest and Para­medics” (see below for video).

Para­medics brave and strong
Up before the break of dawn
Putting poker faces on
Bro­ken bod­ies all day long
The neigh­bors heard a fight
Some­one had a knife
It must have have been the wife
Husband’s lost a lot of blood
He wakes up scream­ing, “Oh my God
Am I going to die?
Am I going to die?“
As they strapped his arms down to his sides
At times like these they’d been taught to lie
“Buddy, just calm down, you’ll be all right”

Sev­eral friends came to his grave
His chil­dren were so well-behaved
As the priest got up to speak
The assem­bly craved relief
But he him­self had given up
So instead he offered them this bit­ter cup
“You’re going to die
We’re all going to die
Could be twenty years, could be tonight
Lately I have been won­der­ing why
We go to so much trou­ble
To post­pone the unavoid­able
And pro­long the pain of being alive”

I per­formed my sec­ond funeral yes­ter­day and the first on my own. I had never met the man who passed away. He was 48 and died of a heart attack in his sleep with no warn­ing (a hus­band and father of two). As a min­is­ter of death who works firmly within the insti­tu­tional church my work stands in some con­trast to David Bazan’s. I hope to make death a lit­tle more palat­able so that its hem­or­rhag­ing force move through the sys­tem with less resis­tance. In rela­tion to death I often recall the words at the close of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Dark­ness. Mar­low is try­ing to recount the words of judg­ment at Kurtz’s death to Kurtz’s wife. He fails in trans­mit­ting this mes­sage of death, instead he says that Kurtz uttered her name at his death. Mar­low says this in response to his action,

It seemed to me that the house would col­lapse before I could escape, that the heav­ens would fall on my head. But noth­ing hap­pened. The heav­ens do not fall for such a tri­fle. Would they have fallen I won­der, if I had ren­dered Kurtz that jus­tice which was his due? Hadn’t he said he only wanted jus­tice? But I couldn’t. I could not tell her. It would have been too dark — too dark altogether …

David Bazan appears lib­er­ated to speak some of those dark words, but what is his com­mu­nity that needs to hear the dark words of faith if he remains largely unheard out­side the church walls? My speech is mod­i­fied within these walls and not all for bad. Some things are too crush­ing and need medi­at­ing, but the right medi­a­tor is cru­cial. I wres­tle between the min­istries of death. I hope to con­tinue in both, in some way.

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The Daughter of the Stars

Published on July 23, 2009 by Cheryl Woelk. Closed Tags: , , , , .

skyline-drive

The 60 year old trees arched over the sun-speckled road, smooth and dark, wind­ing in gra­cious curves along the spine of the Blue Ridge Moun­tains. We slowed as a mother deer and fawn cau­tiously stepped onto the road, then bounded across as we let them pass. Appar­ently, ani­mals in Shenan­doah National Park come first. 

Last week­end, Scott and I finally took a day trip to explore the famous Sky­line Drive. When we first arrived in Har­rison­burg, Vir­ginia, sev­eral peo­ple asked if we had gone on the drive yet. Curi­ous, I added it to our list of places to see. On fur­ther research, I dis­cov­ered that the National Park’s Sky­line Drive runs over 100 miles north and south along the moun­tains we see from our kitchen win­dow. It con­nects at the south­ern point with the Blue Ridge Park­way, a scenic route which fol­lows the ridge another 469 miles south to Chero­kee, North Carolina.

An arti­cle in the local Daily News Record gave me more insight into the his­tory of the park­way. Mem­bers of the Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corp (CCC), a work project Pres­i­dent Roo­sevelt began dur­ing the Depres­sion, built the Sky­line Drive and most of the basic park facil­i­ties along the road. After the CCC had been dis­banded, the Civil­ian Pub­lic Ser­vice, an alter­na­tive ser­vice project for con­sci­en­tious objec­tors dur­ing WWII, con­tin­ued work along the parkway. 

Another story of the park came to mind as we stopped at the over­looks and stared in amaze­ment at the expan­sive land­scapes below, with the sun pok­ing through clouds in streams above our heads. Before the estab­lish­ment of the National Park, res­i­dents lived on the moun­tains and hills. The government’s Pub­lic Park Con­dem­na­tion Act forced thou­sands to sell their homes and move off their land. From con­ver­sa­tions with peo­ple from Page County, it seems that some fam­i­lies still feel bit­ter­ness towards the gov­ern­ment for mak­ing them leave their homes. 

As the sun began to set, we took the next park exit and began the loop back to Har­rison­burg. I only expe­ri­enced a small part of the drive, and know only a small por­tion of its his­tory yet. I won­der about the scars of slav­ery in these fields, I won­der about the pain of the Civil War fought between the peaks, and I won­der about the peo­ple who lived here first and named it Shenan­doah, “Daugh­ter of the Stars.” 

What an inter­est­ing place to learn about build­ing peace.

Wafering on the Wafer

Published on July 23, 2009 by Will Loewen. Closed

So, I had a post ready last week.  I saw a per­fect news story.  As I was rumi­nat­ing in my mind what I should write about, more devel­op­ments came along mak­ing it more inter­est­ing to me and more fit­ting for this forum.  It was all com­ing together so well in my mind that I began to think that if only sto­ries like this would come up more often, I could make a career out of writ­ing about them.

The news story was Stephen Harper’s com­mu­nion con­tro­versy.  When it first broke, the report was that he had accepted a com­mu­nion wafer given to him at Romeo LeBlanc’s funeral, and promptly after receiv­ing it had stuffed into his pocket (which any tran­sub­stan­ti­a­tion­ist would tell you is an incred­i­bly offen­sive thing to do to the actual body of Christ).  The next report was that he had in fact eaten it, but that since he is an Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian, then accord­ing to Catholic law, he shouldn’t have accepted it, let alone con­sumed it.  This was right up my alley.  I had all sorts of com­mu­nion the­ol­ogy stuff I was going to write.  The church and state issue would have been easy to write about.  I had some Ref­or­ma­tion era debates I could refer back to as well.  I even had a clever title plucked from the pages of the King James, “Whoso­ever eateth and drin­keth unworthily” which nar­rowly edged out the pro­ceed­ing words (with my gram­mat­i­cal revi­sions) “eat­ing and drink­ing con­dem­na­tion onto himself”.

The Prime Min­is­ter even­tu­ally responded to the issue, say­ing first that it was a low point in Cana­dian jour­nal­ism (which was fine by me since I saw myself as report­ing on the report­ing of it as much as I was actu­ally report­ing on the actual story) and sec­ond that it was per­son­ally impor­tant to him that he always accept com­mu­nion when it was offered to him.  It was as though the story was writ­ing itself.  The high­est gov­ern­ment offi­cial in the land was speak­ing about the individual’s right to per­sonal reli­gious expres­sion and the reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion involved was speak­ing about laws and reg­u­la­tions.  I could hardly believe the way it was unfolding.

Of course, the wheels even­tu­ally began to fall off.  I couldn’t find the right way or the right place to include the dis­claimer that I thought I needed, that I was merely com­ment­ing on the issue at hand and not stat­ing any kind of polit­i­cal stance.  Then I won­dered if even the inclu­sion of that dis­claimer was an insult to me and any­one read­ing.  Also, my wife’s been telling me for a while that I need to make my writ­ing more pos­i­tive sound­ing, and I it seemed that no mat­ter how I put the words together, it always sounded unnec­es­sar­ily crit­i­cal of Catholics.

This issue was still on my mind this past Sun­day when we gath­ered with our con­gre­ga­tion for com­mu­nion.  Beside me sat a vis­i­tor who was cur­rently on staff with a local Chris­t­ian char­ity.  He asked if he was allowed to par­tic­i­pate, and I imme­di­ately insisted that of course he was.  As he and I walked together to the table in the mid­dle of the room, I thought about what was implied in my answer.  In some ways I was unfairly say­ing that we have an open table, unlike those Catholics who prac­tise incor­rectly.  A closer inspec­tion of my views on com­mu­nion revealed that per­haps my views were more strict than theirs.  I don’t believe that the com­mu­nion table is open to every­one, in fact I think it is closed to any­one, includ­ing mem­bers of my own con­gre­ga­tion, if they are not in right rela­tion­ship with God, a line I myself was dan­ger­ously close to crossing.

I was for­tu­nate to par­tic­i­pate that morn­ing, not because I was the right kind of per­son or because I was in the right kind of church, but because a gra­cious Lord poured him­self out for unwor­thy sin­ners like me.

Letters to a Young Poet — Letter 10

Published on July 21, 2009 by David Driedger. Closed

This is the final para­graph in the last let­ter that Rilke wrote to Franz Kappus,

Art too is only a way of liv­ing, and, how­ever one lives, one can, unwit­tingly, pre­pare one­self for it; in all that is real one is closer to it and more nearly neigh­bored than in the unreal half-artistic pro­fes­sions, which, while they pre­tend prox­im­ity to some art, in prac­tice belie and assail the exis­tence of all art, as for instance the whole of jour­nal­ism does and almost all crit­i­cism and three-quarters of what is called and wants to be called lit­er­a­ture. I am glad, in a word, that you have sur­mounted the dan­ger of falling into this sort of thing and are some­where in a rough real­ity being soli­tary and coura­geous. May the year that is at hand uphold and strengthen you in that.

I sus­pect that most of us with some appre­ci­a­tion towards the arts feel a lit­tle sting in Rilke’s part­ing words. I also sus­pect that Rilke is not inter­ested in crit­i­ciz­ing pro­fes­sions as such but in crit­i­ciz­ing those who “pre­tend prox­im­ity”. Nature, real­ity and truth will not be fooled. Rilke believes that they can be trusted, but this in turn means that they must be trusted. We can­not fool or manip­u­late art and beauty. Prox­im­ity and pres­ence is key both to the for­ma­tion of iden­tity and to the healthy rela­tion­ships with oth­ers. Rilke’s call inward demands that we begin ana­lyz­ing or most pri­mal walls, those inte­rior walls that divide our pas­sions, goals and com­pul­sions. What have we ghet­toized in our self? What is it in us that remains her­met­i­cally sealed? This move­ment is nec­es­sary first because it in turn affects our exter­nal sen­sual real­ity. In greater self-understanding we develop courage and sta­bil­ity to allow our­selves to “pres­ence” real­ity and not pre­tend prox­im­ity. There is no peer review here that can val­i­date our inte­rior and the move­ment is not nat­ural. Much of Rilke’s admon­ish­ing focuses around receiv­ing the dif­fi­cult. This can of course be reduced to pathol­ogy and veiled masochism, but this is not truly dif­fi­cult. The rela­tion­ship between pres­ence and dif­fi­culty is key here. To expe­ri­ence pres­ence we need iden­tify par­tic­u­lar divid­ing walls and either dis­man­tle or at least gate them. Walls, how­ever, are the very essence of our grasp for con­trol and power. To take down a wall is con­trary to the nature indi­vid­ual self-preservation, or at the very least it is an act of trust beyond one’s self. The move­ment of dif­fi­culty is the move­ment of de-centralizing a per­sonal posi­tion of power. This how­ever, is also the move­ment and pos­si­bil­ity of pres­ence, even communion.

Can these bones live?

Published on July 21, 2009 by Cheryl Woelk. Closed Tags: , , , .

The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the mid­dle of a val­ley; it was full of bones. He led me all round them; there were very many lying in the val­ley, and they were very dry. He said to me, ‘Mor­tal, can these bones live?’ I answered, ‘O Lord God, you know.’ Then he said to me, ‘Proph­esy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.’ 

So I proph­e­sied as I had been com­manded; and as I proph­e­sied, sud­denly there was a noise, a rat­tling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had cov­ered them; but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, ‘Proph­esy to the breath, proph­esy, mor­tal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.’ I proph­e­sied as he com­manded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast mul­ti­tude. 

Then he said to me, ‘Mor­tal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off com­pletely.” There­fore proph­esy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my peo­ple; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my peo­ple. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spo­ken and will act, says the Lord.’ (Ezekiel 37:1–14 NRSV)

I watch the grass-covered hill, scat­tered with trees under a blue­bird sky from my place in the con­gre­ga­tion. The words of Ezekiel 37 enter my ears. I close my eyes.

I’m in Hiroshima. I see the bones of the burned with ragged pieces of flesh hang­ing from them. Voices cry out in pain and agony from the silent walls of the Peace Museum. Not even bones. Only the shadow of one sit­ting on the step remains after the inferno blast. Can these bones live?

I’m in Nan­jing. I see the bones of the buried in mass graves. Unknown and buried alive. Screams of moth­ers hold­ing their slaugh­tered babies in their arms. Skulls piled neatly give wit­ness to the silent walls of the Mas­sacre Museum. Can these bones live?

I’m in Wash­ing­ton D.C. I see the bones of women and chil­dren shov­eled into the ground. The theft of human­ity. Lives caged as ani­mals and gassed to death. Stolen chil­dren watch their par­ents die beside them star­ing at the silent walls of the Holo­caust Museum. Can these bones live?

The bones of the mas­sa­cred. Stripped of dig­nity. Laid bare with no more breath than stone. Who can imag­ine the wounds of Rwanda heal­ing? The pain of the Balkans eas­ing? The tears of Sudan ceas­ing? In the mem­ory of such hor­ri­fy­ing vio­lence and unspeak­able evil, dare I ask, “can these bones live?”

My eyes open in the peace­ful still­ness of the sanc­tu­ary. Awe swells within me as the immen­sity of these words swirls in my mind. God’s spirit is breath. It brings strength and move­ment from life­less­ness. It restores the human­ity out of peo­ple destroyed by vio­lence. It re-creates each per­son hid­den in the dark and name­less graves with the like­ness and light of God. The undo­ing of the great sin of dehu­man­iza­tion — restora­tion, rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, and renewal for all. In the soil of mas­sacre and despair, the unimag­in­able vision of our Lord God sows extrav­a­gant hope. 

And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my peo­ple. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spo­ken and will act.

Meeting Jesus in the stranger

Published on July 19, 2009 by Hinke Loewen-Rudgers. Closed

Dur­ing some recent trav­els while mov­ing from one coun­try to another, I met sev­eral peo­ple who were faces of Jesus to me. One, a 12 year old girl who befriends me on a bus and sits beside me, a com­fort­ing pres­ence even when lan­guage proves to be a bar­rier for us. She takes it upon her­self to trans­late for me, helps me with lug­gage and makes the 5 hour trip seem much less.

Another, a woman trav­el­ling to the same stop I was who takes me under her wing guid­ing me to the next bus sta­tion and the right bus. She stops for refresh­ment, buy­ing me bread in bustling Jerusalem when I need it for energy to keep car­ry­ing my large bag in the intense sun. Her wel­com­ing pres­ence embraces me as she trans­lates, guid­ing me to my seat and chat­ting on the way. Then upon arriv­ing at our des­ti­na­tion when I thank her, she merely grasps my hand and looks at me deeply. This seems to be all we need even though we, as strangers just shared time like friends do.

A shop keeper invites my friend and me in for tea. He tells us sto­ries of his life and we share sto­ries from our own. Then he tells us those places in town where we should be care­ful as for­eign women and tells us we must visit his home and meet his fam­ily. Our own part in this show of hos­pi­tal­ity seems to be small in so many ways but maybe it is enough to drink tea and make promises of future shop­ping and visits.

These are not the only sto­ries, there are oth­ers when I have been harassed, frus­trated, cheated, or ignored by strangers. But times like these above shine out and dis­solve the frus­tra­tion and cre­ate hope because if it pos­si­ble to over­come bar­ri­ers of lan­guage, reli­gion, and cul­ture and extend a sim­ple love, then per­haps any­thing is possible.

Published on July 17, 2009 by Dick Benner. Closed

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Yes, there’s more action at MWC

Published on July 17, 2009 by Dick Benner. Closed

Apolo­gies for not keep­ing my promise of report­ing in daily from Asun­cion.  What with the inten­sive activ­i­ties, the spo­radic inter­net con­nec­tion and the demands on me as a con­fer­ence reporter, this activ­ity, though well-intentioned, got pushed to the bot­tom of the daily routine.

What an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence!  The gath­er­ing of nearly 6,000 Men­nos from around the globe, includ­ing the diver­sity of tongue and nation­al­ity, is truly an uplift­ing and life-changing event.

It is dif­fi­cult to put into words–the wor­ship inspi­ra­tion, the singing, the drama of scrip­ture pre­sen­ta­tions by per­sons with national garb and ges­tures, the whirl­wind of activ­i­ties, includ­ing stim­u­lat­ing work­shops, musi­cal groups per­form­ing in the chapel, chil­drens’ parades, local tours and the expe­ri­ence of eat­ing in the mass din­ing hall in the base­ment of this large complex–hospitality of the local Paraguayan churches.

There are the moments of seri­ous his­tor­i­cal reflec­tions, like the work­shop I attended where Larry Miller, exec­u­tive sec­re­tary of MWC, had six pre­sen­ters from the “churches of the world.”  I was espe­cially struck by the rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the Vat­i­can, who jok­ingly intro­duced him­self as “the guest from Baby­lon,” but who, in a more seri­ous vein, named the divi­sion we have nursed for nearly 500 years as a “sin” by both sides of the conflict.

In another post I will describe my feel­ings about the obvi­ous dis­con­nect between our “talk” about peace and jus­tice being our high­est pri­or­ity at the moment and look­ing across the street to hous­ing and liv­ing con­di­tions of the worst pos­si­ble kind.  And to see the street ven­dors hawk­ing their food out­side our “court” is another reminder that within these walls of priv­i­lege and power we have a long way to go to address what is right under our eyes–not only Paraguay, but in Canada and the US, Europe, Africa, Asia and other Latin Amer­i­can countries.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JMYovPxE-0[/youtube][/youtube]

It’s the singing!

Published on July 15, 2009 by Canadian Mennonite staff. 1 Comment
  1. YouTube Preview ImageGreet­ings from Paraguay where win­ter has just begun. Spir­its soar here in Asun­cion, the cap­i­tal city of 512,000, as more than 6,000 global Men­non­ites gather once again to cel­e­brate their her­itage, their diver­sity, their com­mon bond in Jesus Christ. The gath­er­ing is of itself inspi­ra­tional but it is the music in this free-spirited Latino cul­ture that is the most mov­ing. I could speak of many things, but this sam­pling gives you a taste of this hap­pen­ing. Lis­ten to this video, com­pli­ments of Ray Dirks.

Letters to a Young Poet — Letter 8

Published on July 14, 2009 by David Driedger. Closed

With respect to our place in the future Rilke says,

The future stands firm, dear Mr. Kap­pus, but we move in infi­nite space.

In an attempt to get my own head around Rilke’s thought in the fol­low­ing para­graphs I will quote in full with per­haps some brief com­ments clar­i­fy­ing what I am focus­ing on or perceiving.

And to speak of soli­tude again, it becomes always clearer that this is at bot­tom not some­thing that one can take or leave. We are soli­tary. We may delude our­selves and act as though this were not so. That is all. But how much bet­ter it is to real­ize that we are so, yes, even to begin by assum­ing it. We shall indeed turn dizzy then; for all points upon which our eye has been accus­tomed to rest are taken from us, there is noth­ing near any more and every­thing far is infi­nitely far. A per­son removed from his own room, almost with­out prepa­ra­tion and tran­si­tion, and set upon the height of a great moun­tain range, would feel some­thing of the sort: an unpar­al­leled inse­cu­rity, an aban­don­ment to some­thing inex­press­ible would almost anni­hi­late him. He would think him­self falling or hurled into space, or exploded into a thou­sand pieces: what a mon­strous lie his brain would have to invent to catch up with and explain the state of his senses!

Why is it that the move­ment towards the soli­tary is so dis­ori­en­tat­ing? I have writ­ten else­where that I can­not con­ceive of a non-relational real­ity, which seems to make this idea of pri­mal soli­tude a prob­lem.  While that may be true I won­der if what Rilke is get­ting at is that our notion of con­nec­tion or rela­tion­ship is more often the con­nec­tion to our­selves which we see in oth­ers. We love in oth­ers what we love in our­selves and there­fore do not love oth­ers at all.  We hate (or cre­ate) in oth­ers what we also hate. We are dis­ori­en­tated in soli­tude because we have lost the self-perceived affir­ma­tion we find in others.

So for him who becomes soli­tary all dis­tances, all mea­sures change; of these changes many take place sud­denly, and then, as with the man on the moun­tain­top, extra­or­di­nary imag­in­ings and sin­gu­lar sen­sa­tions arise that seem to grow out beyond all bear­ing. But is nec­es­sary for us to expe­ri­ence that too. We must assume our exis­tence as broadly as we in any way can; every­thing, even the unheard-of, must be pos­si­ble in it.

This is where my sense of Rilke’s tran­scen­dence emerges. By tran­scen­dence I mean open­ness.

That is at bot­tom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most sin­gu­lar and the most inex­plic­a­ble that we may encounter. That mankind has in this sense been cow­ardly has done life end­less harm; the expe­ri­ences that are called “visions,” the whole so-called “spirit-world,” death, all those things that are so closely akin to us, have by daily par­ry­ing been crowded out of life that the senses with which we could have grasped them are atro­phied. [empha­sis mine]

Then he writes this in con­nec­tion to human relationships.

For it is not iner­tia alone that is respon­si­ble for human rela­tion­ships repeat­ing them­selves from case to case, inde­scrib­ably monot­o­nous and unre­newed; it is shy­ness before any sort of new, unfore­see­able expe­ri­ence with which one does not think one­self able to cope. But only some­one who is ready for every­thing, who excludes noth­ing, not even the most enig­mat­i­cal, will live the rela­tion to another as some­thing alive and will him­self draw exhaus­tively from his own expe­ri­ence.  [empha­sis mine]

Rilke goes on to encour­age Mr. Kap­pus to explore the con­tours of his world crit­i­ciz­ing human­ity for becom­ing to accom­mo­dat­ing to their envi­ron­ment. He continues,

We have no rea­son to mis­trust our world, for it is not against us. Has it ter­rors, they are our ter­rors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dan­gers at hand, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life accord­ing to that prin­ci­ple which coun­sels us that we must always hold to the dif­fi­cult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faith­ful. How should we be able to for­get those ancient myths that are at the begin­ning of all peo­ples, the myths about drag­ons that at the last moment turn into princesses; per­haps all the drag­ons of our lives are princesses who are only wait­ing to see us beau­ti­ful and brave. Per­haps every­thing ter­ri­ble is in its deep­est being some­thing help­less that wants help from us.

Far from being an attempt to view the world through rose col­ored glasses Rilke here advo­cates a “nar­row path” rec­og­niz­ing that we can­not trust the smooth and the easy. This path is both unsta­ble and promises no fruit. Rather, this per­spec­tive opens wide the embrace of ter­ror and abyss with the knowl­edge that they are not embed­ded or foun­da­tional in the cre­ated order. They too will be dis­solved or as Rilke sees it trans­formed as we approach them in beauty and bravery.