I’m back.
Sorry to have been away for a while. I’ve been off exploring the garden, doing a little “shell searching.” I’m pleased to say that I didn’t find the right answers; just better questions to ask.
I have to admit, the reason I stopped writing was that it became apparent (to me anyway) that I was preaching. Yes, I had a bit of an agenda. I think I thought I was right and that became uncomfortably uncomfortable. It was time for a rest.
So I’m sorry for thinking I had the right answers. I promise not to think that anymore. I promise to look for the right questions, if “right” can be defined as loving, inspiring, cultivating.
It’s nice to be back.
September 29, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Ah.. yes.. questions. I, too, on the hunt for those. Some others speak more eloquently than I… perhaps you’ll appreciate some resonances with their take on the matter:
“Asking the proper question is the central action of transformation”
- Clarissa Pinkola Estes
“…I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”
- Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903 in Letters to a Young Poet
(welcome back).
September 29, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Thanks, friend.
I have another friend who once told me it was good to “live in the confusion.” It’s taken me a while to be comfortable with that, if I really am. I seemed to have longed for the answers more than the questions. Perhaps I had too many questions, or perhaps, more accurately, they weren’t the “proper questions,” as you point out.
When Jesus was asked a question he mostly replied with another question, the proper question…or told a story which raised more questions than answers. Seems that God is found in mystery and once we get to understand that we live with less dualisms. So thanks for the reminder!
I did once pass on my friend’s advice who then quoted it to someone else. It got him a slap in the face. Seems it’s not always well received!!