MY WIDENING CIRCLES

+

One week ago today I celebrated my 50th anniversary of priestly ordination. The mass and the buffet

Kids get up close at mass

Grand-niece Gracie helps cut the cake

following it were truly joy-filled. They were as filled with joy as I was with gratitude. Gratitude to God, and also to all the relatives and friends who have been loving and supporting me along the way. Someone reminded me that a "jubilee" in the bible lasts for a whole year, so I started wondering what this coming year might mean for me. I didn't have long to wait for one good answer. 

Someone gave me a book of beautiful poems by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, entitled Rilke's Book of Hours. which includes the original German as well as the lovely English translations. (Click on the link above to get a quick biography of him.)

I opened to the second poem in the book, and was immediately given a new way of seeing the jubilee year. First, here's the entire poem:

Widening Circles

I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?

The opening two lines swept me up in a spacious embrace of love and optimism. Instead of seeing my life as starting its inevitable decline that poets, playwrights and physiologists often dwell on, Rilke gave me a different and opposite way to look at my life: Just when so many factors are suggesting that the beautiful circles of my life should be starting to grow smaller, Rilke offers me the idea that I live my life in widening circles / that reach out across the world. The "ever-widening circles" of my life are already touching the infinite! I circle around God, around the primordial tower. /

I’ve been circling for thousands of years

And the third and fourth lines of the poem had a particularly pointed message for me at this anniversary time, [my loose translation]: Maybe I won't complete the circle I'm currently on, but I'll still continue pursuing my path. In Rilke's vision, the end won't come with a fiery crash, nor with a bang nor a whimper. The "end" involves being swept up in the outermost of those ever-expanding circles, the one I'm already living in, until I touch the infinite, endless circle of God's love, of Jesus' embrace. But meanwhile, my task as a Christian doesn't change: I still live my life in ever-growing circles of love that embrace all of creation and, paradoxically, even God himself.

So, last Saturday's beautiful jubilee celebration of God's love and faithfulness, shared by two-hundred relatives and friends, has taken on further meaning. You know how aerospace engineers will make a rocket fly near a planet so as to make use of that body's gravitational pull to give the rocket a "boost," increasing its speed as it zooms past? It's called a "gravity assist." Well, I consider my jubilee celebration as a "gravity assist" to help me to widen the ever-expanding circle of my life.

Pray for me that the gravity assist will keep working!

Here's the original German:

Ich lebe mein Leben in wachsenden Ringen,

A small circle -- Group hug!

die sich über die Dinge ziehn.Ich werde den letzten vielleicht nicht vollbringen,
aber versuchen will ich ihn.

Ich kreise um Gott, um den uralten Turm,
und ich kreise jahrtausendelang;
und ich weiß noch nicht: bin ich ein Falke, ein Sturm
oder ein großer Gesang.