I have moved on to Krista Tippett's second "Foundations" podcast episode, which is a mere 8 minutes long this time.
These four short podcasts are Tippett's re-launching of her On Being podcast and they are stunningly rich and beautifully simple. Each one leaves me with more to think about than my aging brain can take in.
Here's the gist of her second one:
She starts with a Rainer Maria Rilke quote from his book, "Letters to a Young Poet:"
“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.”
Tippett then asks us to ponder what it would mean to "live the questions now" in our own lives. In our own context. In our own season. In our own unique place in this world. In this unique moment in history.
She states that we each carry "vast, aching, open questions for which we do not have answers."
I heard those words and almost gasped: "My God, how true this is!" If only we gave ourselves time to ask our truest selves what those questions are for us.
I walked in the dusky early evening as I listened to this podcast, pausing it as I went to give myself time to contemplate each thought.
I asked myself: "Alice, what questions are you living now?
Here's what bubbled up for me at this moment in time, in this one life I have to live, in this season of my life, in this moment in history:
- What does love require?
- What is mine to do in this moment?
- What do I want my 60th decade to look and feel like? To what do I want to turn my attention?
- How do I live as a follower of Christ in a culture where I barely recognize Christ in most self-proclaimed Christians?
- Who is being hurt in my community and how can I come alongside them in love?
Now, here's the thing: We Americans love to rush to our answers. There is nothing more we love than an ANSWER! We tend to despise questions we don't know the answers to immediately. (I blame math flashcards for this problem!!) So there will be a temptation in all of us to rush to our answers. To fill in the blanks with our "very best work" which can often mean good answers, solid answers, well-curated answers ... but rarely real answers.
Tippett urges us, instead, to carry these questions with us over time. To ask ourselves, "How can I carry these questions around in my soul these days?"
She entreats us to believe, as Rilke did, that if we simply live the questions now rather than demanding immediate answers we may find ourselves living "along some distant day into the answer."
This Advent season, as winter lays over us like a soft blanket, might I gently urge us to take some moments to slow down, to give our souls space from all the hustle, bustle, and noise, so that we can hear the questions that are whispering inside of us.
May we, like Mary the mother of God, ponder these things in our heart.
And may we trust the great Question Asker to lead us along some distant day into the answer.
Photo by Ana Municio on Unsplash
Thanks for sharing this Alice. I immediately thought about Tomas Halik and something I had read of his....
"I once saw on the wall of a Prague subway station the inscription “Jesus is the answer,” probably written by someone on the way back from some high-spirited evangelistic gathering. Yet someone else had aptly added the words: “But what was the question?” It reminded me of the comment made by the philosopher Eric Voegelin that the biggest problem for today’s Christians wasn’t that they didn’t have the right answers, but they’d forgotten the question to which they were the answers.
"Answers without questions—without the questions that originally provoked them, but also without the subsequent questions that are provoked by every answer—are like trees without roots. But how often are “Christian truths” presented to us like felled, lifeless trees in which birds can no longer find a nest?…
"It takes the confrontation of questions and answers to return to a real meaning and dynamic to our statements. Truth happens in the course of dialogue. There is always a temptation to allow our answers to bring to an end the process of searching, as if the topic of the conversation was a problemthat has now been solved. But when a fresh question arrives, the unexhausted depths of mysteryshow through once more. Let it be said over and over again: faith is not a question of problems but of mystery, so we must never abandon the path of seeking and asking." (Tomáš Halík, Patience with God)
But how often are “Christian truths” presented to us like felled, lifeless trees in which birds can no longer find a nest?…
That question right there took my breath away. I have been given many Christian truths in my life that felt exactly like "felled, lifeless trees."
I could not love that entire quote more. "Truth happens in the course of dialogue," right? Which is probably why Jesus was the master of a great question and the prompter of much dialogue. Oh if only his followers could do the same. Thank you for the great work you do helping folks engage in generous questions, generous dialogue and the ability to hold on to Mystery.