A New Presence

Into what are we being redeemed? From what or whom? From whence? 

Redemption is something I have been praying about for a long time and writing about intentionally this week. I have not defined it however. I believe we are being saved from all that is not of God. I believe it is a process. And I believe that as we are sanctified and saved by grace, a gift, we are called to engage in the process of all salvation. This is hard work and joyful work. The result of the work is the revealing of a deeper Presence. The other side of redemption is perfect freedom. The other side of redemption is a truer more genuine integrated self. Below Rilke helps me embrace and process the sadnesses of life just as he calls us to live the questions. As we all seek the love which saves us especially now in dual pandemics, may we live into the tensions that we might emerge closer to One, closer to the Beloved Community, which Rilke calls fate:

“It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living. Because we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us; because everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away from us; because we stand in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing.

That is why the sadness passes: the new presence inside us, the presence that has been added, has entered our heart, has gone into its innermost chamber and is no longer even there, - is already in our bloodstream. And we don't know what it was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing happened, and yet we have changed, as a house that a guest has entered changes. We can't say who has come, perhaps we will never know, but many signs indicate that the future enters us in this way in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens.

And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside. The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke