Poetry Chaikhana Sacred Poetry from Around the World

Search the Poetry Chaikhana site:

| View All Poems by Hadewijch | Next Poem >>
All things by Hadewijch (13th Century) Timeline English version by Jane Hirshfield Original Language Dutch Christian : Catholic 13th Century All things are too small to hold me, I am so vast In the Infinite I reach for the Uncreated I have touched it, it undoes me wider than wide Everything else is too narrow You know this well, you who are also there     -- from Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women, Edited by Jane Hirshfield Amazon.com	Recommended Books Christian Mystics: Their Lives and Legacies throughout the Ages, by Ursula King Hadewijch: The Complete Works (Classics of Western Spirituality) , by Mother Columba Hart Meister Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics: Hadewijch of Brabant, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete, by Bernard Mcginn Sacred Voices: Essential Women's Voices Through the Ages, Edited by Mary Ford-Grabowsky The Shambhala Anthology of Women's Spiritual Poetry, Edited by Aliki Barnstone More >>
| More Poems by Hadewijch | Next Poem >>

Commentary by Ivan M. Granger

This is the mystical recognition: the realization that in your Self of selves you are immense!

All things
are too small
to hold me,
I am so vast

Just read those lines again.

Everything that can be called a "thing," each item of perception and thought is just a glimmering sliver of the whole Being we inherently are. No body, no name, no job, no history can truly contain what we are. A glass of water can suggest the lake, give us a taste of it, but not contain it.

The middle section of this poem is almost erotic in its naked yielding to "the Uncreated," in the recognition of how that "touch" completely "undoes" us. That too is the mystical recognition. As we finally realize that we are not contained by the body or the social roles we play, where then is the boundary of identity? Where do you say, Here I stop and beyond is not-me? That point no longer exists. We are "In the Infinite;" our source is "the Uncreated." Those old, limited identities are undone, they fall away, and the inner core of the Self, the Heart, is spread "wider than wide."

But why bother with explanations? You already "know this well, / you who are also there."

Ivan M. Granger's original poetry, stories and commentaries are Copyright © 2002 - 2011 by Ivan M. Granger.
All other material is copyrighted by the respective authors, translators and/or publishers.