Today I’m nannying and reading the great poet Rilke. Rilke keeps assuring me that everything that is real is difficult, that everything that is life is difficult, that difficulties are beauties waiting to be loved.
A tiny child is digging her tiny fists into my soft skin, wanting for the hundred and eighth time today to be in my lap. Not so she can sit and enjoy my willing embrace. But so she can stand on my thighs while she pounds her limbs into mine, like the only possible happiness is for our bodies to be metaphysically conjoined. It was sweet, affectionate the first hundred and seven times, but now my unique identity is getting bruised.
Because of Rilke, I at least consider pressing into the difficulty and trying to love it. So I think about clinging to God’s shins, grasping and pounding and clinging to get closer, closer still. Unlike my clunky, rigid identity, I know that God can take me entirely into himself, can take me ever closer, and that he desires such an end much more than I. Then I think about all of humanity, millions upon millions of discrete beings, clamoring to get in, to be part of this all loving, all accepting whole.
I think about the enormity of a God who can do this too. I think about what it means to be truly omnipresent. I take that difficulty, and I love it just a little.