a heavenly happening
Rainer Rilke.
I remember discovering his writing online many years ago. It was this line from one of his letters that felt real, “I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try and love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.” The lines continued, “Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”
Those words contained solace right when I needed them most. I wanted to hold them in my hands. When space freed that same day after reading Rainer’s work for the very first time, I drove to the bookstore to receive a physical copy of ‘Letters to a Young Poet’.
I pulled into the parking lot, hurried over, and swung the big wooden doors open of Barnes & Noble. Upon walking in, I noticed the number ‘27’ on one of the immediate journals that were showcased in the front. I don’t know why I noticed it, but I did.
Walking closer to the poetry section, I caught sight of another ‘27’ on a book cover. “Interesting,” I thought and continued forward.
Just as I kneeled down to the ground shelf where Rainer’s book remained, I looked up to see a man standing to the side of me with a football jersey on. It had a large ‘27’ on the back.
And just like that, at a moment’s notice, I thought to myself, “The quote is on page 27 of this book.” I grabbed it from the shelf to verify if that was true, turning the pages, one by one until I arrived at page 27.
I scanned the lines one by one, present, curious, and searching. Could it be?
And there it was. The quote that I saw earlier in the morning online was on page 27 of the book. I gasped, tears welling in my eyes. I felt how special it was to be alive.
The sun was setting and shined through the bookstore’s windows. That honeyed light, that series of synchronicities — were everything I needed to feel how extraordinary living really was, and how I’d always be just one book away from a heavenly happening.
Sometimes you think you’d like certainty. After all, its appeal is obvious. We’d be better prepared for life knowing what would happen in it, every time. It’d lessen the blow of misfortunate, loss, and tragedy. But if life was really so certain, how would we ever feel the splendor of surprise?
Surprise keeps us present, curious, and searching. And we’re always better off if we are present, curious, and searching.
And if there is one truth, let it be this: you really don’t know how far away you are from a heavenly happening.
So let a place of great expanse descend from the sky above and you find yourself there, seated firmly on a cloud, singing, “patience, patience, patience…” while the divine is at work, orchestrating a moment that leaves you breathless.
(Because the divine is always at work. Life sees you. Life knows you. To believe this is faith.)