{"id":722,"date":"2023-01-12T08:28:34","date_gmt":"2023-01-12T12:28:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/rilkes-timeless-spell-for-living-through-difficult-times-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2023-01-12T08:28:34","modified_gmt":"2023-01-12T12:28:34","slug":"rilkes-timeless-spell-for-living-through-difficult-times-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/rilkes-timeless-spell-for-living-through-difficult-times-the-marginalian\/","title":{"rendered":"Rilke\u2019s Timeless Spell for Living Through Difficult Times \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Profit<\/a>
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\"Let<\/a><\/p>\n

There are times in life when the firmament of our being seems to collapse, taking all the light with it, swallowing all color and sound into a silent scream of darkness. It rarely looks that way from the inside, but these are always times of profound transformation and recalibration \u2014 the darkness is not terminal but primordial; in it, a new self is being born, not with a Big Bang but with a whisper. Our task, then, is only to listen. What we hear becomes new light. <\/p>\n

A century ago, Rainer Maria Rilke<\/strong> (December 4, 1875\u2013December 29, 1926) extended a timeless invitation to listening for the light in his poem \u201cLet This Darkness Be a Bell Tower,\u201d translated by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows in their altogether indispensable book In Praise of Mortality: Selections from Rainer Maria Rilke\u2019s Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>). <\/p>\n

I read it here accompanied by another patron saint of turning darkness into light \u2014 Bach, and his Cello Suite No. 5 in C Minor, performed by Colin Carr:<\/p>\n