Rilke & Nepo

Once for each thing. Just once; no more.

And we too, just once. And never again.

But to have been this once, completely,

even if only once: to have been 

at one with the earth,

seems beyond undoing.

Rainer Maria Rilke

✿

I enter every meeting with another being saying to myself, “If I only have this time on Earth with this person, if I may never see them again, when is it I want or need to ask, to know? What is it I want to say?”

[…]

The truth is that each living spirit we encounter is a depth to gently swim in, a miracle that can quench our thirst. Honoring others in this way has opened me to wisdoms that would otherwise run silent beneath my time on Earth.

Mark Nepo