What did Rilke mean by "I live my life in ever widening circles"?

This quotation is from a short devotional poem called "I Live My Life in Widening Circles" by Rainer Maria Rilke. To understand the quote it is important to look into the poem's background and the circumstances under which Rilke wrote it.

The poem comes from a collection of poetry called The Book of Hours, which is divided into three sections. It is the first poem of the first section, titled The Book of Monastic Life. Rilke wrote the poems in this section after his visits to Russia in 1899 and 1900. Impressed by the Russian culture and the devotion of the peasants to their Russian Orthodox religion, as well as personal meetings with Leo Tolstoy and other devout Russian authors, Rilke intended to depict his worship of God and appreciation of the vast natural beauty he had found in his travels.

The line "I live my life in widening circles" (the "ever" is added in some translations from the original German but not others) has to be considered in context with the rest of the poem. The "ever widening circles" refer to Rilke's travels and also his writings and devotional philosophy. He traveled throughout much of his adult life. Besides Germany and Russia, he visited France, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland. He continued to write poems throughout his life, and his writings have achieved great international popularity.

The key to the poem is in its second stanza, in which Rilke clarifies that God is the "primordial (also sometimes translated as ancient or age-old) tower" around which he circles. In other words, Rilke's life of travels, writing, and philosophical speculations always keeps God at its center, even though physically he may wander farther and farther from where he started.