"You Come and Go," by Rainer Maria Rilke

You come and go. The doors swing closed
ever more gently, almost without a shudder.
Of all who move through the quiet houses,
you are the quietest.

We become so accustomed to you,
we no longer look up
when your shadow falls over the book we are reading
and makes it glow. For all things
sing you: at times
we just hear them more clearly.

Often when I imagine you
your wholeness cascades into many shapes.
You run like a herd of luminous deer
and I am dark. I am a forest.

You are a wheel at which I stand,
whose dark spokes sometimes catch me up,
revolve me nearer to the center.
Then all the work I put my hand to
widens from turn to turn.

+ Rainer Maria Rilke
The Book of Hours, Book I, Poem 45

The great theme of Advent and Christmas is the coming of Christ, the “arrival” of God in a intimate, familiar form with whom we can connect, and relate, and dwell — even as we hold in mind that this Child of Humanity is also none other than God, the One who exceeds all forms and dwellings. An “arrival,” that is, of the One who is always with us and within us, a great wheel, a running herd in a dark forest, a gently opening, closing, opening door.

As the season of Advent begins, Rilke helps us contemplate the quiet, astounding mystery of the Incarnation: a God who comes and goes, and even so, a God in whom all things turn.