So you need God language for that if you’re in the West, and then, of course, I was born into a theistic, a Christian tradition, so it’s in — and I come from [laughs] a long line of preachers, so it’s in my bones. “We must accept our reality in all its immensity. Everything, even the unheard of, must be possible within it. This is, in the end, the only courage required of us: the courage to meet what is strangest and most awesome.”
Tippett:You know, I’m curious about — you’ve talked about this as a time in which we are faced with the “great unraveling” or the “great turning,” or perhaps both of those at the same time. Just with this conversation holding us, with Rilke by our side, what do you see right now?
Macy:Well, it seems clear that we who are alive now are here for something and witnessing something for our planet that has not happened at any time before. And so we who are alive now and who are called to — who feel called, those of us who feel called to love our world — to love our world has been at the core of every faith tradition, to be grateful for it, to teach ourselves how to see beauty, how to treasure it, how to celebrate, how — if it must disappear, if there’s dying — how to be grateful. Every funeral, every memorial service is one where you give thanks for the beauty of that life or the quality of what — and so there’s a need, some of us feel — I know I do — to what looks like it must disappear, to say, “Thanks, you were beautiful. Thank you, mountains. Thank you, rivers.”
And we’re learning, how do you say goodbye to what is sacred and holy? And that goodbye has got to be — has got to be in deep thanksgiving for having been here, for being part of it. I kind of sound like I’m crying, and I do cry, but I cry from gladness, you know. I’m so glad to recognize each other. You can look in each other’s face, see how beautiful we are. It’s not too late to see that. We don’t want to die not knowing how beautiful this is.
Tippett:You know, when I think about Rilke and the ways he brings together solitude and love, I feel like you also have always have brought together what I would think of as synonyms or companions to those, like interior life and aliveness. I’ve heard you talk about the voice within and that if people can hear the voice within, they hear that the voice within wants to live. And when people can share that voice within, they fall in love with the world, they fall in love with each other, they fall in love all over again with life.
Anita, you have spoken about your calling as a psychologist and a teacher, and also as a translator and writer, as standing at the intersection of the sacred, the daily, and a holding of the pain of the world. So I just want to ask you the question I asked Joanna a minute ago — what do you see, looking out right now, and again, with Rilke as our friend standing alongside us at that intersection?
Barrows:I think about the passage that I referred to before, from the Ninth Duino Elegy, where Rilke really speaks about what he sees as our mission as human beings. “Perhaps we are here to say …” — and then he names things about the world. So for me — I actually just had a book of poems published, called Testimony, which is 20 long poems and a coda. And each of the poems speaks about some of the suffering of the world — I speak about a prisoner, I speak about a child in Syria, I speak about a checkpoint in the West Bank, occupied Palestine — speaks about the suffering of the world, and then I move in other sections of the poems to the beauty of the world. And for me, that intersection of suffering and beauty, gratitude, as Joanna says, feels like my mission in poetry.
And to state that, to name that, to be here to name those things feels essential to me, and I see Rilke as my friend in that. This conversation is so wonderful, because it’s really bringing me back to the origins of my reading Rilke, who really was the first serious poet whose work I read when I was first feeling my own vocation as a poet — that he was so engaged with this as our mission, perhaps we are here to say. And if you have the passage, Joanna?
Macy:Yes, I have it, and I remember when we translated that together. This is the ending of the Ninth Duino Elegy. An elegy is an incantation or a poem at the end of a funeral.
“Earth, isn’t this what you want? To arise in us, invisible?
Is it not your dream, to enter us so wholly
there’s nothing left outside us to see?
What, if not transformation,
is your deepest purpose? Earth, my love,
I want it too. Believe me,
no more of your springtimes are needed
to win me over—even one flower
is more than enough. Before I was named
I belonged to you. I seek no other law
than yours, and know I can trust
the death you will bring.
“See, I live. On what?
Childhood and future are equally present.
Sheer abundance of being
floods my heart.”
Tippett:Ohhh.
Macy:Thank you, Rilke.
Barrows:Yes, thank you, Rilke. Thank you for accompanying us.
Macy:Thank you for being with us.
[music: “Klockan” by Andreas Söderström & Rickard Jäverling]
Tippett:Joanna Macy is the root teacher of The Work That Reconnects. Our previous episode with her is “A Wild Love for the World.” That’s also the title of a lovely book of homage to her, published in 2020. Anita Barrows was part of the On Being episode on “The Soul in Depression.” And both of those shows include readings from Rilke’s poetry that they’ve translated together so brilliantly: Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God; also, In Praise of Mortality and A Year with Rilke. Anita Barrows’ most recent poetry collection is Testimony. She is Institute Professor of Psychology at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California, and also maintains a private practice. And Anita and Joanna’s Letters to a Young Poet: A New Translation and Commentary was published in June, 2021.
[music: “Vittoro” by Blue Dot Sessions]
The On Being Project is: Chris Heagle, Lily Percy, Laurén Drommerhausen, Erin Colasacco, Eddie Gonzalez, Lilian Vo, Lucas Johnson, Suzette Burley, Zack Rose, Colleen Scheck, Julie Siple, Gretchen Honnold, Jhaleh Akhavan, Pádraig Ó Tuama, Ben Katt, Gautam Srikishan, and Lillie Benowitz.
The On Being Project is located on Dakota land. Our lovely theme music is provided and composed by Zoë Keating. And the last voice that you hear singing at the end of our show is Cameron Kinghorn.
On Being is an independent, nonprofit production of The On Being Project. It is distributed to public radio stations by WNYC Studios. I created this show at American Public Media.
Our funding partners include:
The Fetzer Institute, helping to build the spiritual foundation for a loving world. Find them at fetzer.org.
Kalliopeia Foundation, dedicated to reconnecting ecology, culture, and spirituality, supporting organizations and initiatives that uphold a sacred relationship with life on Earth. Learn more at kalliopeia.org.
The Osprey Foundation, a catalyst for empowered, healthy, and fulfilled lives.
The Charles Koch Institute’s Courageous Collaborations initiative, discovering and elevating tools to cure intolerance and bridge differences.
The Lilly Endowment, an Indianapolis-based, private family foundation dedicated to its founders’ interests in religion, community development, and education.
And the Ford Foundation, working to strengthen democratic values, reduce poverty and injustice, promote international cooperation, and advance human achievement worldwide.
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