Give Me Your Hand
When I was a child I did not like receiving ashes on Ash Wednesday and would try to surreptitiously wipe them off when nobody was looking at me. I have an uncomfortable memory from the third or fourth grade of being scolded by a teacher who told me that I was supposed to wear them all day as a sign of penance, or a sign of my faith, or something like that - I’m not sure. I was an awkward child at the time and my memory of the details is fuzzy, but I clearly remember feeling very uncomfortable about the whole thing.
As an adult I think that it had something to do with being a shy kid who didn’t like having attention directed at me. Having worked with adolescents for my entire adult life, I now understand that this is a pretty common feeling for young people - and perhaps for older people as well. When I was a child, having a smudge of ashes on my forehead felt like an invitation to look at me, to wonder why I had that mark on my skin, and I did not want the attention. Never mind that everyone else had ashes on their forehead - as a child I couldn’t see beyond myself, and I assumed that the ashes were drawing unwanted attention to me.
I feel very differently about the whole thing now. If anything, the world probably needs more faith-filled people publicly acknowledging their faith lives and making the spirit within them plainly visible so that others might be influenced and perhaps drawn to or made to wish for a similar faith-experience.
So it’s with that thought in mind that I’m sharing this very personal experience.
Two years ago I was in Kansas helping to lead a retreat for a group of teachers. It was the latter half of February and I had been working through some personal matters up until my departure for Kansas. I was mentally and physically exhausted and not really feeling like doing the deep, spiritual work that I felt that I should have been giving to the experience. I shared my frustration with a friend from another Jesuit school and he mentioned to me that he would turn to Thomas Merton whenever he felt this way, so I was trying to take his advice and was reading up on Merton.
Somewhere in my reading I stumbled across a reference that Merton made to one of my favorite poems by Marie Ranier Rilke. It comes from Rilke’s Book of Hours, and the book had been gifted to me by a roommate shortly after I graduated from college. The poem resonated with me at the time, but I had not thought about it in many years. This exploration into Merton’s thoughts on Rilke brought the poem back to me in a time when I needed to see it.
God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
As an adult I think that it had something to do with being a shy kid who didn’t like having attention directed at me. Having worked with adolescents for my entire adult life, I now understand that this is a pretty common feeling for young people - and perhaps for older people as well. When I was a child, having a smudge of ashes on my forehead felt like an invitation to look at me, to wonder why I had that mark on my skin, and I did not want the attention. Never mind that everyone else had ashes on their forehead - as a child I couldn’t see beyond myself, and I assumed that the ashes were drawing unwanted attention to me.
I feel very differently about the whole thing now. If anything, the world probably needs more faith-filled people publicly acknowledging their faith lives and making the spirit within them plainly visible so that others might be influenced and perhaps drawn to or made to wish for a similar faith-experience.
So it’s with that thought in mind that I’m sharing this very personal experience.
Two years ago I was in Kansas helping to lead a retreat for a group of teachers. It was the latter half of February and I had been working through some personal matters up until my departure for Kansas. I was mentally and physically exhausted and not really feeling like doing the deep, spiritual work that I felt that I should have been giving to the experience. I shared my frustration with a friend from another Jesuit school and he mentioned to me that he would turn to Thomas Merton whenever he felt this way, so I was trying to take his advice and was reading up on Merton.
Somewhere in my reading I stumbled across a reference that Merton made to one of my favorite poems by Marie Ranier Rilke. It comes from Rilke’s Book of Hours, and the book had been gifted to me by a roommate shortly after I graduated from college. The poem resonated with me at the time, but I had not thought about it in many years. This exploration into Merton’s thoughts on Rilke brought the poem back to me in a time when I needed to see it.
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
-Rainer Maria Rilke
While on that retreat I found myself in the back of the church after a liturgy, reflecting on the words of the poem, and I fixated on the last four lines, repeating them over and over to myself “Don’t let yourself lose me. Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness. Give me your hand.”
“Give me your hand.”
And I was suddenly overwhelmed. The emotions hit me out of nowhere and I was frozen there, just feeling it all and wondering where the catch in my breath and the tears in my eyes had come from. The feeling lasted long enough for me to know that it was real, and then it quietly slipped away. But it left behind a feeling of peace that I hadn’t known before I walked into the church that afternoon.
I had heard about people having moments like this, and have always wondered about them. Are they real? What do you have to do to experience one? How strong does your faith have to be? How pious do you have to be? Before that moment I had assumed that persons would have to be completely right with God and with their faith lives before being gifted with such an experience, but I came away from it with a clearer understanding of God’s relationship with us.
We are called to make ‘big shadows that God can move in.’ Sometimes that means we have to profess our faith openly - share our faith lives with others - put our vulnerable parts out there for others to see. Perhaps this is why I feel compelled to share my experience with you in this reflection, perhaps it is a way for me to show you my ashes. And sometimes it means just being present for someone else who is struggling. And for some of us it can start as simply as wearing physical ashes today so that others may know that we are present to acknowledge our sins, witness to our faith, and work on improving ourselves.
Lent is an invitation to RETURN to God. It presupposes nothing but our human weaknesses and frailties. It does not demand that we be perfect. God knows that we are not. Our invitation to move closer to perfection occurs forty days from now, when we are invited to take the hand of the risen Christ. He became human so that he would understand our experience and also save us from it. “Give me your hand.”
I am writing this at a time when we are emerging (hopefully) from a pandemic that has disrupted all of our lives. Throughout the last two years, there have been other very serious and painful experiences that our extended communities have weathered. And now, we all watch and anxiously pray for our world leaders as they navigate what has become a dire situation in Ukraine, its effects felt around the world.
“Nearby is the country they call life; you will know it by its seriousness.”
The next forty days are the Church’s invitation to take hold of God’s hand and examine these broken parts of ourselves and of our world, and to repent for them. After the repentance, then the work must begin to make it better, to make things right again. This is very serious work, but salvation is waiting for us on the other side.
Give Him your hand….
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
-Rainer Maria Rilke
While on that retreat I found myself in the back of the church after a liturgy, reflecting on the words of the poem, and I fixated on the last four lines, repeating them over and over to myself “Don’t let yourself lose me. Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness. Give me your hand.”
“Give me your hand.”
And I was suddenly overwhelmed. The emotions hit me out of nowhere and I was frozen there, just feeling it all and wondering where the catch in my breath and the tears in my eyes had come from. The feeling lasted long enough for me to know that it was real, and then it quietly slipped away. But it left behind a feeling of peace that I hadn’t known before I walked into the church that afternoon.
I had heard about people having moments like this, and have always wondered about them. Are they real? What do you have to do to experience one? How strong does your faith have to be? How pious do you have to be? Before that moment I had assumed that persons would have to be completely right with God and with their faith lives before being gifted with such an experience, but I came away from it with a clearer understanding of God’s relationship with us.
We are called to make ‘big shadows that God can move in.’ Sometimes that means we have to profess our faith openly - share our faith lives with others - put our vulnerable parts out there for others to see. Perhaps this is why I feel compelled to share my experience with you in this reflection, perhaps it is a way for me to show you my ashes. And sometimes it means just being present for someone else who is struggling. And for some of us it can start as simply as wearing physical ashes today so that others may know that we are present to acknowledge our sins, witness to our faith, and work on improving ourselves.
Lent is an invitation to RETURN to God. It presupposes nothing but our human weaknesses and frailties. It does not demand that we be perfect. God knows that we are not. Our invitation to move closer to perfection occurs forty days from now, when we are invited to take the hand of the risen Christ. He became human so that he would understand our experience and also save us from it. “Give me your hand.”
I am writing this at a time when we are emerging (hopefully) from a pandemic that has disrupted all of our lives. Throughout the last two years, there have been other very serious and painful experiences that our extended communities have weathered. And now, we all watch and anxiously pray for our world leaders as they navigate what has become a dire situation in Ukraine, its effects felt around the world.
“Nearby is the country they call life; you will know it by its seriousness.”
The next forty days are the Church’s invitation to take hold of God’s hand and examine these broken parts of ourselves and of our world, and to repent for them. After the repentance, then the work must begin to make it better, to make things right again. This is very serious work, but salvation is waiting for us on the other side.
Give Him your hand….
Author: Tom Garrison '92, Principal
Thank you Mr. Garrison for sharing this beautiful story and poem.
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