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Set Loose Your Power

The hour is striking so close above me,
so clear and sharp,
that all my senses ring with it.
I feel it now: there’s a power in me
to grasp and give shape to my world. 

I know that nothing has ever been real
without my beholding it.
All becoming has needed me.
My looking ripens things
and they come toward me, to meet and be met. 

        - Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

We should pray to hear God.  We should also seek to see, touch, taste, and smell God.  Any way we can experience a bit of what God has created and set loose in the world is good.

It is also good to understand our role in continuing to create with God.  God invites us to receive the gift of relationship, trust how that empowers us to engage our truest selves, and set loose our gifts for the world.  

The world needs to hear, see, touch, taste, and smell ordinary human beings with extraordinary callings.  God worked through smelly fishermen turned disciples; through the sick who trusted in touching Jesus; through Paul who went and was heard by others.  Humans saying ‘yes’ to a power allowing transformation of the world.

Rilke feels the power to co-create with God. When I have been in that place, it has been electrifying.  The sense of possibility is amazing.  I have tried to receive well, which means trusting this great love and acting to honor it.  I have tried to be met - but also to meet.  

In this hurting world, God needs us to ripen things with our look.  God needs us to see and then move toward.  God needs us to grasp and shape.  You have the power to do so.    

But be patient.  You can’t make these hours happen.  They are gifts of relationship.  As you welcome and nurture mysterious relationship with God; as you start paying attention in new ways; as you begin to trust deeply: be ready. Be ready to receive and act. 

And while you wait, support others in paying attention and trusting.  Your power is probably connected to them anyway.  Sensing your power is part of your becoming - and part of our becoming.