Things my mother told me...that I never understood

My mom is the type to clip things out of magazines and newspapers that have a particular meaning or interest to her. I'm sure somewhere down the line this will escalate to cutting out Christmas recipes and the obituaries of people she went to the elementary with it. Essentially, this is where my grandmother is at these days. Man, that's something to look forward to. Anyways, she takes these things -usually excerpts from stories, poems, and pictures- and puts them on her bulletin board in the office of our house. This happens to be where our the computer is, and God knows I've spent ample amounts of time there just wasting my life away. I would always look at this one poem that she had cut out of her Vic College U of T alumni magazine. It could have been gibberish to me, because for some reason it just meant nothing. And I would read it over and over again and -nothing.
Fastforward a couple months and it's the first week of school here in Toronto. I'm lonely, homesick, sad, etc etc. My dad comes to visit because of a business meeting, and he gives me a card that my mom had wrote me. Inside, was this one poem that I could never understand. After he left, I sat on my bed and I read it. And all at once, it just made resounding, encompassing sense to me. It's was originally written in German, so the translation sounds a little odd, but I thought I'd throw it on here. And if it doesn't make sense, just give a few years or something...

As once the winged energy of delight
carried you over childhood's dark abysses,
now beyond your own life build the great
arch of unimagined bridges.

Wonders happen if we can succeed
in passing through the harshest danger;
but only in a bright and purely granted
achievement can we realize the wonder.

To work with things in the indescribable
relationship is not too hard for us;
the patterns grows more intricate and subtle,
and being swept along is not enough.

Take your practiced powers and stretch them out
until they span the chasm between two
contradictions...For the god
wants to know himself in you.

-Rainer Maria Rilke