Live the questions

“Live the questions.” The poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote that to a young student who asked him for advice. Here is the full quote:

“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.”

I have long been a little bit unsettled around people who don’t have any questions. When people come with opinions, directions, and criticisms and no questions I always wince a little inside. 

Somewhere along the way as a person matures spiritually and becomes more emotionally sober the impulse to be critical transforms into an invigorating curiosity. I think if a person wants to grow he or she might pray this prayer, “God, help me to be less critical and more curious. Amen.”

Being free and comfortable with questions are a fundamental part of what it is to be a Christian. All our questions should at their core be sourced in an underlying question: How can I become more loving the way that Jesus was loving on the cross?

If you want to get to know someone, ask them questions from the heart motivated by a sincere desire to truly know who they are.

Jesus’ friend Thomas' question was, Can the fullness of God and God’s love really be here among us in the wounds of this life?

What is your question? All your questions are welcome here!

Live the questions.