Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast.

I'm Emanuel Vaughn Lee, host of this show, an executive editor of Emergence Magazine,

located on the unseated ancestral lands of the Coast Miwok people in present-day, Marine County.

Each week, we feature interviews, stories, poetry, and author-narrated essays, exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality.

Earlier this year, our friend, the remarkable Eco-Buddhist philosopher, Joanna Macy, passed away at age 96.

Among her many gifts, she was a seminal translator of the great 20th century poet, Raina Maria

Rilke.

Over 25 years ago, Joanna collaborated with award-winning poet, Anita Barrows, to translate

Rilke's collection of poetry,

the Book of Ours, Love Poems to God, which explores the nature of God through divinely received prayers.

In our final episode of the year, we returned to a selection of these translations, excerpted from the album, Be Earth

Now, read by Joanna and the Nita. These poems speak to the beauty, mystery, and longing present

in both worlds seen and unseen, the unknowability of the divine, and the union of nature and the transcendent.

We share them this holiday period and the hope they nourish the heart and spirit as this year

draws to a close, inviting us to reflect on all that is given and all that fades away. I live

I live my life

in wising

in wising

in wakening ring

I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.

I may not complete this last one, but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.

...