Live the Questions
This statement fascinates me.
I first heard it from one of doctoral professors at UGA. She quoted it often; it originally comes from Rainer Maria Rilke, a Bohemian-Austrian poet. In the last year or so I read his Letters to a Young Poet, which I recommend for serious writers and students of literature, and I will read again. However, his poetry did not work for me, perhaps because they are in translations, but my lack of understanding bears little weight.
The words "Live the Questions" came to my mind this morning as I read Habakkuk. Habakkuk is a much-overlooked, short, but often quoted (out of context) book. "The just shall live by his faith." "The Lord is in His Holy Temple; let all the earth be silent;" "Revive your work in the midst of years;" "Though the fig tree may not blossom." It is probably, like Job, one of the most existential of books, looking suffering and devastation and faith and God's plan in the face and asking honest question that sound, at times, just short of despair.
Rilke's phrase "Live the Questions" always speaks to me of an innate tension, one we live by and in if we are honest and aware. Normally we would say "answer the questions and live the answers." To live the question means we are in a state of dissonance and we do not have the answers. Rilke would probably say because the answers did not exist, or are unknowable; the Christian says we live the questions because the answers are not all apparent yet. Some of the answers God is holding back from us, some we are not ready to hear and understand, either personally or as the human race.
To live the question is to live in a state of faith, by which Habbakuk says we will live. We are not told to eschew questions; question are good. Habakkuk asks two, maybe three very hard and direct questions of God. So does Job, and Solomon, and Paul, and Jesus before the cross. Questions define us, I think. I have always taught my students that questions are the beginning of composition, of creation. For fiction, the "what if?" is the seed of storytelling.
Live the questions. First, don't be afraid to ask them. Find out if there are questions you don't even know about. There are. Don't be satisfied with easy answers. The faster the answer comes, be suspicious. You may be missing the real answer in the fast, glib answer (we honor glib in our culture, for one thing; we think the person who talks fast is smarter by virtue of speed). And then ask the next question based on the answer, probe. Live a life of searching for and answering questions.
I first heard it from one of doctoral professors at UGA. She quoted it often; it originally comes from Rainer Maria Rilke, a Bohemian-Austrian poet. In the last year or so I read his Letters to a Young Poet, which I recommend for serious writers and students of literature, and I will read again. However, his poetry did not work for me, perhaps because they are in translations, but my lack of understanding bears little weight.
The words "Live the Questions" came to my mind this morning as I read Habakkuk. Habakkuk is a much-overlooked, short, but often quoted (out of context) book. "The just shall live by his faith." "The Lord is in His Holy Temple; let all the earth be silent;" "Revive your work in the midst of years;" "Though the fig tree may not blossom." It is probably, like Job, one of the most existential of books, looking suffering and devastation and faith and God's plan in the face and asking honest question that sound, at times, just short of despair.
Rilke's phrase "Live the Questions" always speaks to me of an innate tension, one we live by and in if we are honest and aware. Normally we would say "answer the questions and live the answers." To live the question means we are in a state of dissonance and we do not have the answers. Rilke would probably say because the answers did not exist, or are unknowable; the Christian says we live the questions because the answers are not all apparent yet. Some of the answers God is holding back from us, some we are not ready to hear and understand, either personally or as the human race.
To live the question is to live in a state of faith, by which Habbakuk says we will live. We are not told to eschew questions; question are good. Habakkuk asks two, maybe three very hard and direct questions of God. So does Job, and Solomon, and Paul, and Jesus before the cross. Questions define us, I think. I have always taught my students that questions are the beginning of composition, of creation. For fiction, the "what if?" is the seed of storytelling.
Live the questions. First, don't be afraid to ask them. Find out if there are questions you don't even know about. There are. Don't be satisfied with easy answers. The faster the answer comes, be suspicious. You may be missing the real answer in the fast, glib answer (we honor glib in our culture, for one thing; we think the person who talks fast is smarter by virtue of speed). And then ask the next question based on the answer, probe. Live a life of searching for and answering questions.
Comments