A wondrous poem from the writings of the German mystic Angelis Silesius (1624-77).
Were I to die, then He no longer could survive.
God cannot without me a single worm create;
Did I not share with Him, destruction were its fate.
I am as great as God, and He is small like me;
He cannot be above, nor I below Him be.
In me is God a fire and I in Him its glow;
In common is our life, apart we cannot grow.
God loves me more than Self, my love doth give His weight,
Whate'er He gives to me I must reciprocate.
He's God and man to me, to Him I'm both indeed;
His thirst I satisfy, he helps me in my need.
This God, who feels for us, is to us what we will;
And woe to us, if we our part do not fulfill.
God is whate'er He is, I am what I must be;
If you know one, in sooth, you know both him and me.
I am not outside God, nor leave I Him afar;
I am His grace and light, and He my guiding star.
I am the vine which He doth plant and cherish most;
The fruit which grows from me is God, the Holy Ghost.
Maybe i'm just in a bad mood. Sounds extremely narcissistic and presumptious to me. It makes total sense if you are thinking subjectively, ie, nothing exists if i am dead, at least not to the me who is consiously writing this. So from that point of view the statement means nothing to me.
ReplyDeleteWorms, and me? What a crock. If you die today there will be less worms tomorrow? Wow!
This is the kind of thinking that leads to people putting things on their desk that say "what would i do if i could not fail?"(ala Toy Hayward, CEO of BP). i am all, so i can do anything. Like spill thousands of gallons of oil in the gulf.
Sorry, i guess i'm not in the mood today to hear this kind of romantic poetry. The world is falling apart, and i want to hear your sorrow and your openness to the fact that we as humans are flawed, that we make mistakes, and that we don't listen to the worms! No offense, you asked for commments, just sharing my point of view. lol
john w johnson
Thanks for your comments. My take on this is a bit different . . .
ReplyDeleteThis poem is no excuse for abdicating responsibility, but rather the opposite. It contends that each person is an essential part of reality and plays a distinctive role in shaping that.
We are co-creators, not mere cogs in the wheel. The words do not seem “romantic” to me, but hard-hitting and pertinent in the extreme.
“What would I do if I could not fail?” Put another way, the question is: “What would I do if I were God?”
The irony is that this question is not in the least metaphorical or theoretical.
The world and with its myriad conflicts and disasters is proof.
I appreciate Angelis Silesius' poem... atONEment.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing it.