"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
I have long been interested in the unique power of questions. Questions have a vitality all their own. The energy of a question is different than the energy of a statement. I was recently listening to James Finley on his podcast Turning to the Mystics. I heard him say something that made so much sense. "With questions, the heart is open. When we answer, our hearts close."
When asking questions, the energy is open, vibrant, and curious.
What are the possibilities?
What is the information?
How does this relate to what I know and have experienced?
What if…
What would it mean if…
Questions open new worlds, new ideas, and new possibilities. They can be unsteadying but exciting too.
When the question mark shifts to a period, the animating energy shifts too. Answers, bring a sure, protective, closed dynamic to the conversation.
This is how it is.
It has to be this way.
I know, what I know.
It’s so obvious.
A questioning stance is humble, curious, and open to considering options. It's willing to engage with ideas and processes with a sense of anticipation. Living with questions does keep the heart open.
Answers can bring relief and quell feelings of dis-ease and instability when living in the unknown, and in between times that questions initiate. But, as James Finely observes, answers close the heart. There is no longer a need to consider other options and to humbly engage with potential solutions.
A few months ago, I wrote about being steady, not rigid, and that idea is a part of this. An authentic questioning spirit-with heart open is steady, willing to engage and explore new ideas, but not wobbly. Rigidity sets in when we place a period where there used to be a question mark.
That's why Rilke's quote on questions is so universally beloved. Love the questions. Be patient towards the unknown-Live everything-live the questions. Live in the energy of open curiosity. Live with your heart open.
It's a humble way to live, open, unguarded, willing to ask questions, and in-between the space of unknown and wisdom.
A blessing for living the questions
May your heart be open to your questions and the questions of others. May the unsolved things in your heart be places of growth and possibilities, not fear and treipidation. May you live everything, live open, and be steady in your approach to questions.
Notice what questions you are living.
Are there any questions you should be asking?
Any places where there used to be periods that you need to edit to a question mark?
After a few months' hiatus from haiku Michael, Davin, and I are back at it. I missed our monthly conversation. It's always a highlight of my month. Please join us as we talk about our haiku offerings this month: trees, old love, and darkness.
Visit Profound Living to view our haiku cards this month and the full archive of our haiku conversations.
I’m sharing some thoughtful words about gratitude, I’ve been slowly making my way through Diana Butler Bass’s book Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks. I haven’t read any books by David Steindl-Rast, but I think I need to.
Read the following selections slowly, let the words land gently in your soul.
Do they stir any questions for you? What might the invitation be for you?
"In normal life one is not at all aware that we always receive infinitely more than we give, and that gratitude is what enriches life."
― Diana Butler Bass, Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks
"Everything is a gift. The degree to which we are awake to this truth is a measure of our gratefulness, and gratefulness is a measure of our aliveness.”
"We are never more than one grateful thought away from peace of heart."
"There is a wave of gratefulness because people are becoming aware how important this is and how this can change our world. It can change our world in immensely important ways, because if you're grateful, you're not fearful, and if you're not fearful, you're not violent. If you're grateful, you act out of a sense of enough and not of a sense of scarcity, and you are willing to share. If you are grateful, you are enjoying the differences between people, and you are respectful to everybody, and that changes this power pyramid under which we live."
The greatest gift one can give is thanksgiving. In giving gifts, we give what we can spare, but in giving thanks we give ourselves."
- David Steindl-Rast
a smaller & deeper program note:
Advent begins next Sunday. I’ll be focusing each week of Advent on the traditional themes of hope, love, joy, and peace. I like to look at these ideas “slant” (in the words of Emily Dickinson, “tell all the truth, but tell it slant”)
It always means so much when you share this newsletter with new readers and friends.
with much gratitute and thanks. (Amy)