Just Keep Going

The idea that both beauty and terror comes to us in this life is expressed in a poem that
speaks to the very core of my beliefs.  The poem - Go to the Limits of Your Longing -  is written by the German mystic and poet Rainer Maria Rilke and is shared at the end of this post. 
 
For me, this poem describes the intimate relationship between God and each of us, as shown in the following excerpt.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Both beauty and terror will find us in our life, but we shouldn’t lose hope.  My father died at age 66, thirty-one years ago this month.   During the last ten years of his life, he suffered with early onset of Alzheimer’s disease.  Watching my childhood hero slowly waste away was insufferable.  I was living in Milwaukee at the time, but we would drive the ten hours back “home” to southwestern Pennsylvania each summer to visit my family.  After my dad’s deterioration became too advanced, my mom was forced to place him in a nursing home during the last two years of his life.  I could not bring myself to visit him there on my annual trek back.  Once during this period, someone asked me about my dad.  In response, I meant to say that he was in a nursing home, but what I actually said was that he was in a funeral home.  I believe that is what I really felt.  When my dad died, it was in many ways a relief for which I felt intense guilt.  I sobbed when he died because he was gone; because his mind was wasted away long before he left; because I felt as if I betrayed his love for me when I couldn’t face seeing him in such a deranged state.  I thought at the time that I didn’t love him as much as he had loved me.  But now, these many years later, I am at peace with his death and with my actions.  I just kept going and kept reaching out for the hand of God.
 
Here is the poem.  I hope you find it meaningful.
 
Go to the Limits of Your Longing
By Rainer Maria Rilke

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
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.

An interesting interpretation of this poem can be found here.