Today I read an editorial on Anne Rice’s recent comment about no longer professing to be Christian.  She claims to continue to be a “follower of Christ”, but  rejects “being anti-gay, anti-feminist “. . . ultimately “anti-life.” . . .  . her brief but brutal description of what Christianity has become.   She refuses to allow the heart of her faith to be trapped in a negative fear-based protective stance.   I was reminded of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem below.  Sometimes we have to risk  the self serving trappings to get to the core of the Truth.

Rilke writes:

“I believe in all that has never yet been spoken. 

I want to free what waits within me so that what no one has dared to wish for may for once spring clear without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me, but this is what I need to say.

May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents, these deepening tides moving out, returning,

I will sing you as no one ever has,

streaming through widening channels into the open sea.”

Janie Cook is a retired teacher who lives in Austin, Texas with her husband, Gareth. She shares her days with family and friends (a precious privilege), facilitates a bereaved parents’ support group and enjoys digging in the Texas Hill Country dirt & learning about natural gardening.
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