Living the Questions
A favorite quote among folks at our church is from German poet Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet: "Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language." When asked about their faith, they are likely to say they believe in "living the questions." This has been a hard concept for me to get my mind around.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not one of those people who has to have an answer or an explanation for everything. On the contrary, I have a healthy respect and need for mystery when I'm approaching the Great Mystery. But what, I ask, does it mean to live the questions?
The New Morning show on Doubt gave me some very good examples. It means dealing with uncertainties about the future, as Marna Krajeski must as she faces her husband's deployment to Afghanistan. It means exploring the depths of self-doubt, as Catherine Hunter did in dealing with post-partum depression. It means, as Joan Borysenko and Irwin Kula advise, learning to distinguish between self-doubts that can be destructive and not-knowing that can lead to growth. It means, as Terry Hershey discovers, pushing through resistances and relying upon personal resources in facing a challenge.
Edward Hays, one of my favorite spiritual teachers, has proposed the question mark as a new religious symbol. "Because the '?' approaches life with the spirit of an explorer, it is the sign of the child and it is a sacred sign," he writes in Secular Sanctity. "There are two ways to say the simple truth that God is love. We could say, 'God is love!' Or we could say, 'God is love?' The second way opens us up to an entire process of wonder and exploration. The child within would say, 'How? Why is God love?' "
Good questions make us look deeper and often take us further than answers ever can. Our everyday doubts encourage us to search inwardly, to dialogue with friends, and to keep learning -- and these are all essential elements of the spiritual life.