Tonight, for Marilyn

My heart is breaking tonight for Marilyn. As I thought of her, in the midst of my reading this evening, God brought this poem (it's in my Philip Yancey Prayer book. I did not pause to read it last night as I read the text around the sidebar it's in; I forgot that I had skipped it, and after praying for Marilyn this evening, I opened to the page it was on--not a coincidence, I think). It is new to me. My mind went directly to Marilyn. Then it went to all of us. This is for my sister, and for us.

I love and treasure you all, dear ones. And I am deeply blessed to know that this crowd will not hesitate to pray for and encourage this precious one in Minnesota--there will be many hands carrying her on her mat to Jesus, lowering her through the hole in the roof, because we love her, and He loves us.

Ich bete wieder, du Erlauchter

I am praying again, Awesome One.

You hear me again, as words
from the depths of me
rush toward you in the wind.

I’ve been scattered in pieces,
torn by conflict,
mocked by laughter,
washed down in drink.

In alleyways I sweep myself up
out of garbage and broken glass.
With my half-mouth I stammer you,
who are eternal in your symmetry.
I lift to you my half-hands
in wordless beseeching, that I may find again
the eyes with which I once beheld you.

I am a house gutted by fire
where only the guilty sometimes sleep
before the punishment that devours them
hounds them out in the open.

I am a city by the sea
sinking into a toxic tide.
I am strange to myself, as though someone unknown
had poisoned my mother as she carried me.

It’s here in all the pieces of my shame
that now I find myself again.
I yearn to belong to something, to be contained
in an all-embracing mind that sees me
as a single thing.
I yearn to be held
in the great hands of your heart–
oh let them take me now.
Into them I place these fragments, my life,
and you, God–spend them however you want.

Rainer Maria Rilke, from Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
September 18, 1901