dreaming big

tonight at small group, we finished up mark batterson's wild goose chase. i've already blogged about it, so i won't go into too much detail, but the book ends with one lingering, haunting question.

what are you waiting for?

having begun to dream with God again, and discounting all of the usual culprits that tend to be the answer to the question {fear, failure, assumptions, etc.}, the question too easily causes the heart to skip a beat and lose any sort of courage that had been mustered up.

it is also too easy to discount small steps taken towards a big dream. perhaps all the details aren't figured out, and the reality is, when we do have all the details drawn out in pen, something happens that appends our initial plans, and we need to hit costco to buy liquid paper by the gallon. but we need to celebrate the small steps...even if that step is simply allowing yourself to dream again.

i've quoted this rilke poem before, and to be honest, i'm sure i'll quote it again. i come back to it regularly in attempting to figure out my life, so i will share it with you tonight. i hope that your heart, too, will echo these words.

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.

–Barrows and Macy, trans. 1996. Rilke, Rainer Maria. Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God. Riverhead Books.