These days it seems like I have more questions than answers. I suppose it is part of some quest I’m on for trying to make sense of what’s happening to and around me. I haven’t had a great deal of success figuring things out, so I am learning to sit with unanswered questions, unexplained occurrences, unsolved mysteries. This has not been easy. I am like most people, I sort of like to understand what’s happening, know what’s going on, have some measure of control. But of course, control is an illusion, so I’m learning to be patient.
Huh, why did that happen? What could I have done differently? Who needs something from me today? Should I fast or should I eat? Why would someone want to do something like that? When’s the last time I spoke to my friend? What will happen if I change my mind? Why can’t I have my cake and eat it too? I mean, what’s the point of having the cake if I can’t eat it? How long should I wait before I call them back? What do I want? Where did I put my spare key? What would Mom have done about this? How do I choose between two really different options?Some of my questions are deep and thought provoking: what is my life purpose? Who was I born to be? What do I need to be learning from some of the more challenging experiences I’ve had? Other are of far less life-affecting impact but are questions nonetheless.
So the lesson in gratitude this evening is really about being grateful for having developed the capacity to simply be with the questions. Of course I’d like to know “what’s going to happen” with my life and all the questions I have about what I’d like to be doing with it. But I’ve never been one to skip to the back of the book and read the ending. Even if I could know, I think that somehow the business of life happens in the unfolding; the questions keep me pushing forward toward greater learning. Rilke goes on to say this:
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.”So it would seem that for me, for now, the task is to live the questions. They are here, so I might as well accept them, sit with them, try to love them. If I can truly sit with the questions, live them as Rilke suggests, from a place of gratitude then I have to believe that I am richly blessed indeed. And with patience and as calm a heart as I can muster, perhaps I will indeed at some point live into the answers.
