The first time I heard the beautiful quote below was OnBeing Podcast, which was a lifeline for me, like church really, when I could no longer go.
Host Krista Tippet often referred to Letters to a Young Poet by Rilke.
He writes, “I want to beg you, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are 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.”
What could it mean to be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart, to love the questions themselves?
Firstly, what feels unsolved?
At times I feel as though I’d like to have so many more answers than I do.
Can you be patient, compassionate and generous towards this tussle?
Perhaps asking why it feels like it needs to be solved right now or at all?
What are the questions that keep surfacing for you, that hum away in the background like a movie reel? I have so many. Among them, WTF?! and, how did we (or I) get here? How do I love them?
I’m learning to hold these with curiosity and recognition for how far I’ve come and what I’m clear about now, that I never thought I would be.
And then, what could look like to live the questions? It’s a funny sort of turn-of-phrase isn’t it?
Living the questions creates an image for me of having questions that sort of just accompany me throughout my day. They’re there and point to the many lives I’ve lived at 53 and how I’ve grown. As Rilke says, perhaps we can live into the answers, mull over them, with wisdom and new perspective.
Be kind towards your questions and your curious parts.
I posted this week that I’m excited to be on the launch team for Hillary McBride’s new book, Holy Hurt, coming out in April. Check it out! I’ll be sharing more from this super helpful resource in the coming weeks. You may have come across this quote from it already – ‘We stoke in people an inner critic and tell them it’s the voice of God’.
If you’d like to connect with me in counselling, you can get in touch here. I see clients Australia-wide online and face-to-face in Marrickville, in Sydney’s Inner West.
Warmly,
Jane
