Monday, April 4, 2011

Living The Questions

“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)

The spiritual concept of “living the questions” has been somewhat maligned by religious fundamentalists for the past several years.  It has been misunderstood as a modernistic, self centered approach that threatens the institutional Church.  The answers, it is said, are readily available in scripture and the teachings of those chosen to lead their congregations.  There is some truth to this.  Institutions always fear that which might challenge doctrine.  These kinds of challenges have historically created chaos which threatened the very foundations of religion.  Martin Luther’s confrontation, for example, set Christianity on a path that ultimately changed the way that people worshiped and fragmented the Church into many segments.  Living the questions sets us on a course of individual exploration.  It does not confine us to established doctrine.  It is important to remember, however, is that it does not discount or discard that doctrine either.

God gives us a grand invitation to be something new in the world. Living the questions is about following a path into the answers rather than accepting someone else’s solutions. When we live the questions in our conversations, we are in dialogue with the people around us. When we live the questions as a way of life, we are in dialogue with life, itself. When we live our questions, we are always discovering new answers to them. Perhaps we shouldn't even speak of "answers". Perhaps living a question, living an inquiry, is like living with a fruit tree that continually generates fruit for our nourishment. There is never anything final about any particular apple from an apple tree. More will follow. They don't answer, they just nourish. Ultimately, questions can take us deeper into the meaning of our lives.

There are questions that lie hidden in our hearts. We notice them living within us if we look at our past and present lives with care. Some have been with us for many years; some may be fresh and new. Some may excite us; others terrify us into keeping them hidden. How we can learn to live these questions creatively, so that they move us toward living into the answer? We begin by recognizing and honoring the questions that we are already living. This is difficult because living the questions can be uncomfortable. Ours is not a culture comfortable with ambiguity: we want certainty, a clear-cut solution; we want to know what's right and what's wrong. Questions are meant to have immediate answers, so those that don't lend themselves to obvious or convenient answers get hidden away.

Some of the most disturbing questions are those that we have been asking since we were quite young. Who am I? Where am I going? What does this all mean? There is substantial work to be done in following these. God asks us questions that are meant to lead us. Scripture offers us the first question from God to man: “And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day; and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, ‘Where art thou?’

Where are you? Are you where your body is? Or where your mind is? Are you living fully in the pain and frustrations of the present? Or are you daydreaming about some past that never really was? Or fantasizing about some future that never will be? Are you standing up to be counted? Or are you going along with the crowd? Are you accepting the cost of your freedom? Or are you hiding among the trees of the garden? “Where are you”, the first question from God to man. Questions are very valuable. Our culture rushes for answers, but no answer means anything until we have followed the question.

We are afraid of questions. We think questions make us seem stupid or incompetent. The questions actually are our entrances to larger life. Not what we already know but what we have yet to learn is our growing edge. The poet Rilke counsels us to learn to love our questions. I believe there is a loving God, that God loves me, and that God loves all human beings exactly as God loves me. Following the questions is about this very faith. Faith is not only the decision to risk; it is also the power to make that decision. It is the courage to be, to affirm yourself in the face of all that denies us.

Following the questions gives us an insight. It gives us the ability to say YES to ourselves when everyone seems to be shouting NO. It is also about being able to listen to that NO and hear what message it is sending from which we can profit. It takes a leap of faith toward a spiritual dimension. When we refuse to discount that NO but accept it as a component of our own path toward the answer, we are no longer bound by the model that set by those who are shouting NO. We will find the freedom to continue our search and point ourselves in the direction of God. We will be able to respond to God’s question “Where are you” with the answer “Here I am”. We will trust that if we move today by the finite and partial light that is given us that we will know more and different things tomorrow than we know today. We can be open to new possibilities that we cannot even imagine today.