I've been reading this book with compiled writings of Henri Nouwen - "Spiritual Direction". One of the beginning chapters is titled, "Who will answer my questions?"
I absolutely love what he says in this chapter. He has a quote from Rainer Maria Rilke (not sure who he/she is):
'I want to beg you as much as I can...to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves...Do not now seek 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...Take whatever comes with great trust, and if only it comes out of your will, out of some need of your innermost being, take it upon yourself and hate nothing.'
Nouwen goes on to say:
"When God enters into the center of our lives to unmask our illusion of possessing final solutions and to disarm us with always deeper questions, we will not necessarily have an easier or simpler life, but certainly a life that is honest, courageous, and marked with the ongoing search for truth. Sometimes, in living the questions, answers are found. More often, as our questions and issues are tested and mature in solitude, the questions may simply dissolve."
These two passages have been some of my favorites lately. And I LOVE this book. Would highly recommend it!
Peace
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I like the idea of living questions. It implies that as life goes on questions may be answered or maybe not. To truly live this out though people must concede to answers even when the answers are not the answers they want. Otherwise you aren't living questions you are living with questions that you don't want answered.
Having had questions much of my life on a variety of topics and having lived them, I believe, for the most part, my "living them" was really my way of putting them off or not wanting to live the answer. I think I have lived my questions and now I am trying to live with the answers which weren't what I thought they would or wanted them to be.
I think living answers may actually be tougher than living questions.
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