living the questions
practicing presence to beauty and pain
“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 now 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.” —Rainer Maria Rilke
I don’t like dishonest questions. You know the ones—when someone asks a question while expecting a particular answer as though we were studying for a biology test, when really, we are longing for room to allow our minds to wander around the unexplored depths of our curiosity. When I’m in a learning environment and a leader asks a question while prodding me along to arrive at a predetermined answer, the most honest parts of myself close off, the expedition cut short, the learning disrupted. I would rather information be delivered as a statement than disguised as a question.
When I was a child, the people with whom I felt the most myself learned to expect a cascade of unending questions. Sometimes, I was inviting others into my experience of curiosity about myself and the world (when I got glasses in fourth grade: Did Jesus have 20/20 eyesight?). Other times, I was gathering information to appease my anxiety about some upcoming event (Who will be there? What will be expected of me?). When I wasn’t verbalizing questions out loud (I had learned that sometimes people would respond with laughter, impatience, or annoyance), I was thinking them.
As an adult, I’m not much different. I’ve noticed that certain questions seem to tug at my sleeve for an extended period of time before they gently loosen their grip and allow another one to arrest my attention. These are not the kinds of questions that have static answers; they deserve and require an ongoing, embodied discernment. I’ve observed that wrestling with honest questions often involves a measure of grief alongside joy, which I suppose is a part of the process of awakening and growing.
For nearly a decade, one of the questions I’ve been living with is some version of this: How do I remain awake and engaged with the suffering of the world without being overwhelmed by it? Grappling with this question has taken many forms, including immersing myself in the stories of marginalized groups and diversifying the authors and teachers from whom I’m learning, in the hopes that I can become better prepared to stand in solidarity with those who are suffering. This process has evoked grief over the inaccurate and incomplete history I learned about our country and western Christianity. Our understanding of history deeply impacts our sense of who we are and how we relate to others, so this learning and unlearning has unearthed questions around individual and collective identity. On a more individual level, this is work I practice as a spiritual director, parent, friend, family member, and community member, holding space for others who are going through difficult things.
To address overwhelm, I’ve needed to grow in self-knowledge and self-compassion, understanding more about how I’m wired and what my role is during this moment. This has involved grief over the expectations I’ve had for the kind of person I thought I could or should be and what I could or should accomplish. More fundamentally, I’ve been exploring what it means and looks like to bear fruit. I’m learning to see my sensitivity as a gift to be stewarded and cherished rather than a weakness or liability, but it is an ongoing process. Listening to and honoring my body continues to be a growing edge. While I learn to honor my capacity, I’ve also gained more tools for increasing it in some areas. Developing shame resilience increases capacity for repentance and repair, and learning to be with my own pain helps me to stay present to the pain of others.
When the news is particularly devastating, as it has been of late, another version of this question is, “How can I live my life such that in my later years, I won’t look back and regret that I didn’t do more to co-labor with others in addressing the atrocities happening during this time?” Part of the discernment required in responding to this question involves asking, “What is mine to do? What am I able and willing to do? What is truly helpful for others versus what is self-serving? When am I driven by ego versus the true self?” Again, when I dig a little deeper into this question, I find that part of the response evokes grief.
More recently, having passed the 40 year mark a couple years ago, another question has arisen, not in place of, but as a companion to, the one above: How can I live my life such that I won’t look back and feel sad that I was so immersed in the pain of the world, I didn’t appreciate this beautiful, brief, and, in the words of Mary Oliver, “one wild and precious life?” This new question seems to be the second half of the equation, and I expect I’ll be living in the tension between the two for a long time. These are questions to hold together as the companions they are, allowing them to focus my gaze on both the difficult and the beautiful.
Enneagram teacher Suzanne Stabile says, “What you focus on determines what you miss.” I have focused for so long on discerning “What is mine to do?” that perhaps in my quest to co-labor with others for a better world, I was missing the good and beautiful that is present right here, right now. Reality includes suffering, sadness, and pain, but it also contains beauty, hope, and joy. May we honor and increase (at the pace we are able) our capacity to be present with the beauty and pain that is ever-present in reality.
“We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own. I will lie down and sleep in peace, for you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety.”
—excerpt from “Compline” in The Book of Common Prayer by Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
Questions to consider…
Staying awake: What is helping you remain awake and present to the suffering in the world and in people around you?
Tending overwhelm: How are you caring for yourself to prevent or tend to overwhelm? What helps you remain awake and present to your own suffering?
Noticing beauty: What is beautiful in your world right now? How can you take time to savor beauty?
Book Nook
Books that help me “live the questions” (i.e., remain present to the suffering of others and myself and remain present to beauty):
You Better Be Lightning by Andrea Gibson - I’m joining with so many others in grieving the recent passing of this beautiful soul. Their poetry (especially spoken word—get the audiobook) is absolutely magical.
Instructions for Traveling West by Joy Harjo (poetry)
Trauma in the Pews by Janyne McConnaughey
Holy Hurt and The Wisdom of Your Body by Hillary McBride
Try Softer and Strong Like Water by
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem
All About Love by bell hooks
The Will to Change by bell hooks
Black AF History by Michael Harriot
The Making of Asian America by Erika Lee
Theologizin’ Bigger by
The Color of Compromise by
Jesus and John Wayne by
No Bad Parts by Richard C. Schwartz (on Internal Family Systems)
Black Liturgies by Cole Arthur Riley
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Feminist Prayers for My Daughter by
Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture by Virginia Sole-Smith
See No Stranger by Valarie Kaur
A Hidden Wholeness by
A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
You Are Enough by Jonathan Puddle
Open Heart, Open Mind by Thomas Keating
I See You’ve Called in Dead by John Kenney - surprisingly, this darkly humorous novel was a lovely read (content warnings: death, funerals, depression, suicide)
I loved this article about Abide in Love, a new organization that is caring for ICE detainees.
What book(s), article(s), or podcast(s) would you add?
Spiritual Direction
If this post resonates with you and you would like a compassionate, nonjudgmental space to process big questions, you might find spiritual direction to be a helpful place to work through grief and growth on the spiritual journey. For more information and/or to schedule a free introductory Zoom call, click here or email me.
Blessing
May you find connections with God, others, creation, and self that lead you deeper into “living the questions” as you awaken, grieve, grow, and savor beauty. May living the questions lead to a more expansive, compassionate, connected, and creative life.
Be well, friends.
