"…staying put is nowhere." -Rilke

   The horse leaps and what do we experience in the grace of his flight?

   Apparently frozen in the photograph, he moves. For he can do naught else.

   Nor can any being.

   To be alive is to be in motion. 

   Perhaps this is why an ineffable desperation lurks within each of us.

   In our quietest moments, our energy twirls and spins and, at its core, vibrates.

   We enter our bodies bearing Love's energy. We existed as vibrations of God before our birth. Our spirit, our energy, will continue in another form after we leave our bodies.

   The most sensitive among us know the presence of these other energies. 

   Meanwhile, the world constantly tosses our lives this way and that. 

   For example, what happens when our bodies are bent with pain? Our hearts scream for the help of a caregiver – some earthly angel that will bring us relief.

   Yet, when relief comes, our inclination towards fear lurks close on its heels.

   Within the intimacy of love hides the fear of losing it.

   Anxiety lines the silk of Beauty.

   Doubt circles every anchor of Faith.

   The most courageous among us still hears the howling of the hell hounds.

   In the first of his Duino Elegies, Rilke signals a source of consolation available to any of us who open our hearts.

  Although he references a mythical character, Rilke might as well be alluding to Christ when he describes what filled the void when the god among us "quit the earth."  

   After the death of the body, the emptiness, "resonated with the vibration that now enraptures, consoles and helps us."

   In faith, we don't, of course, need to "see" Jesus in human form. We can experience the rapturous healing of his energy as powerfully now as could anyone walking beside him in 30 A.D. 

   The question is not Jesus' presence, but ours. 

   I had never, until now, thought of Jesus' death as a "void." For a void is literally nothing.

   But, none of us, certainly not Jesus, can ever leave a void.

   In the wake of our passing from this earth, our energy will remain in other forms.

   Do you not feel, right now, the kindness you experienced from your long dead grandmother or the laughter you heard from a friend who has passed on?

   Consider the illumination that Jesus brought to this earth. Imagine the enduring power of the Love he brings to us in this very moment. 

   We can deflect this Love. We can say we don't trust it. We can complain that Love doesn't give us what we want. We can insist that Love is useless.

   Or we can accept the power of the consoling vibration that will always enter a heart that softens, opens and receives. 

-Reverend Erie Chapman

Photograph – Screen Capture #1a copyright erie chapman 2012