I wasn’t raised with the wirings and poetry of Rilke, but I am sure grateful to have been introduced to them. The following is arguably one of his best known quotes, yet I had to post it. It is just so full of wisdom and invitation, at least as I hear it.
Sometimes I am guilty of assuming people living before me, lived with a different kind of certainty or belief, or didn’t try to open up to questions, or move toward their doubts. I invite you to give this wisdom from Rilke a listen and wonder if there is anything for you within it…
“. . . I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, 34-5
Peace, dwight
what tha fuck is that???
I love this. Reminds me of our conversation the other day. Thank you for your part in my season of questions…
Nice find, Dwight. What a confusing mess it is to live the questions, yet seemingly the only way to make sense of our world and lives.
Here’s to a chaotic and frightening dance with an epistemological abyss!
This is one of the best quotes I’ve ever heard on the subject. It reminds of "The Karate Kid" where Mr. Miagi first makes "Daniel son" wax the floors and do excercises before he teaches him karate. The first thing that people need to learn is patience. It is in the life of the here and now that we begin to find the answers to the deepest theological questions. I’ve found that the more I talk about theology with friends the less I am able to live out my faith. What I really need to be doing is keeping the questions in the back of mind and searching for ways to bring God’s kingdom tangibly to the world around me.