Rilke's Unicorn - A January Remembrance of Steven Schaber

John Sanford, a former rector at St. Paul's, once wrote a book titled "The Kingdom Within." It was based on a text from the 17th Chapter of St. Luke, in which Jesus says "The Kingdom of God is Within You."

Many of the parables Jesus told were about spiritual growth,
like the story of the mustard seed.

The Kingdom of God is not physical or material but spiritual. When we attempt to make it physical or literal we run into stone walls. The most powerful forces in our human lives are spiritual ones. All great reality rises from spiritual foundations. If I have a healthy spiritual life I will be an effective person. If I am not in touch with my spirituality I go nowhere. It starts with belief.

Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a poem about belief and the spiritual life, using the metaphor of the Unicorn. He wrote,

O this is the animal that does not exist,
But they didn't know that, and dared nevertheless
To love it...and Because they loved it, it came to
be a...pure creature.
They always left a space for it,
and in that space, clear and set aside,
it lightly raised its head, and hardly needed to be.

The late professor Steven Schaber worshipped at St. Paul's and was a member of Integrity. He was also an Associate of the Society of St. Paul and sadly died in January of 1993. Stephen wrote me something shortly before his death I've always remembered . "Rilke's idea is powerful: belief can create reality. What we believe, exists by virtue of that belief. And a thing believed has more power even than a thing of fact, if that fact is not empowered by meaning for us."

Jesus went about empowering belief so that like the parable of the seed it points to the kingdom and its growth as the work of God. God plants, another waters until the harvest is ready. The work of the church is to bring in the harvest. The seed, its growth and reality is not dependent upon the harvesters. It grows and develops in spite of us.

As John Sanford wrote " The kingdom of heaven begins in a person's life as something seemingly small and insignificant but through a process of growth becomes a mighty power. The image of the tree is rooted in the earth but reaches up to heaven, so our growth includes both our earthly and spiritual natures."

Because the kingdom is associated with the inner growth of the individual, it is very much a here and now experience. In January I always think of Stephen and Rilke's Unicorn.


The Rev. Canon Andrew Rank