The Questions
“I beg you… to be patient…”
So begins the timeless wisdom from one of Rainer Maria Rilke’s most beloved letters.
And so begins my request to you, my beloved Soulcare MKE community. Yes, please be patient with me. It has been four months since my last blog post…
4 months… and 22 years… and 46 years…
of becoming.
“… toward all that is unresolved in your heart…”
There is a lot that has been unresolved in my life, a lot that is still unfolding and becoming. Things like:
the completion and commissioning from my formation program
paired with a sense of “what’s next”-ness that is continuing to unfold.
A slow waiting for safety in schooling,
the ins and outs of the lazy - busy - productive - boring dailiness of summer life,
followed by the anticipation and living-into back to school routines.
The beautiful shifting of the seasons
and tender awe at the shifting inner landscape as well.
“… and to try to love the questions themselves…”
So many questions!
There are still the perennial questions that are worthy of reflection, such as:
Who am I?
What are my primary values?
How do I want to be in relationship with the world?
Who do I love?
And there are the deeper, unexpected and aching questions of the moment, like:
Who am I as a person of faith?
How do I want to be in relationship with an institutional and religious structure that has let me down?
Can I be in relationship with an institution that has let me down? That is harming persons?
When is it time to cut ties? When is it time to draw close?
How do I love that which is deeply flawed? Even sinful?
How can I NOT love that which is deeply flawed and sinful?
Who gets to name identity? Who gets to claim belonging?
Am I cutting off my nose to spite my face?
Where is my community? What are my communities?
What is obedience? To whom do I owe obedience? Who can claim such authority of my soul?
What does it mean to pass on the faith?
What am I passing on? Am I passing on an institutional identity or the rich tradition of faith which as formed me and sustained my ancestors for generations?
What are the groanings of my soul, those questions that have yet to be articulated?
“… like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue…”
But I want entry. I don’t want to be locked out.
I want to understand.
I want to know the way forward.
“… Do not now seek the answers,
which cannot be given you
because you would not be able to live them…”
I feel this. I feel this deeply.
I can’t live the answers right now.
It’s too soon.
“… And the point is, to live everything…”
Everything?
Can everything belong? Can everyone belong? Is there room for all of us?
How can we listen, deeply, to one another? to the wisdom of our selves? to the very heart of God?
And isn’t this obedience? To listen at the level of our soul?
How do we do this individually, together?
How do we live everything?
“… live the questions now…”
So. Many. Questions.
So much pain.
So much beauty.
“… Perhaps you will then gradually,
without noticing it,
live along some distant day into the answer.”
I have had this poster displayed in my home, somewhere, for the past twenty-two years.
I noticed it this week, hiding behind the apples and bananas.
And I noticed the date.
October 6-8, 2000
I was introduced to Rilke’s wisdom twenty-two years ago this week.
The same week I made my very first Treasure Map.
And now, praying with both of these anchoring truths, along with my current Treasure Map and the great prayer of Thomas Merton, I have hope for what the next twenty-two years will bring.
Perhaps I will look back in twenty-two years and see with greater understanding. Perhaps I will have lived into more of the answers.
But for now,
day by day,
I will work to show up ~
for my family,
for my community,
for my God ~
and live the questions with a heart of service.
So, dear community:
What are your questions?
In what ways do you gather in meaningful communities of faith? In what ways to you long to gather in communities of faith?
Where - and how - do you find meaning?
Let me… let us!… know.
Thank you for being a part of the Soulcare MKE community,
where we find our way, together.
