And yet, though we strain

against the deadening grip

of daily necessity,

I sense there is this mystery:

All life is being lived.

Who is living it, then?

Is it the things themselves,

or something waiting inside them,

like an unplayed melody in a flute?

. . .

Who lives it, then? God, are you the one

who is living life?

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

(in Rilke's Book of Hours,

translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)