Living the questions

This morning I was reading (in Kornfield's The Wise Heart) about the value of meditating on images and symbols. So as I began processing more of the images from Italy -- I'm almost done with Verona, so if my wrist holds out they should all be up on my website in a day or two -- I was keeping an eye out for statues that might speak to me.

Interestingly enough, it turns out that in the war between the papist Guelphs and the imperialist Ghibellines of Italy, the Veronese were Ghibellines, and the statues in Verona definitely convey their skepticism about religious matters. So instead of being inspired by the madonnas that are everywhere you look in cities like Rome and Venice, I find these guys, who appear to be recommending temperance and caution.

"You might want to reconsider that," says the first. "Are you sure that's the course of action you should pursue?" queries the second. I like it: it's a questioning spirit, not unlike Bill Maher in his movie, Religulous. He never actually says there is no God; he makes no claim to be an atheist. He just doesn't KNOW, and he's wary of empty pronouncements.

So why are these guys speaking to me this morning? I think I'm hearing echoes of yesterday's post about the chosen vessel. Perhaps one of the ways we bring the Divine into the world is by continuing to question and evaluate. I don't know about you, but it seems to me that any time I make a definitive pronouncement I immediately run up against a counter example.

Which doesn't mean that I have no core values or beliefs: clearly I do. But one of those core beliefs is something I learned growing up in Ohio: the Ohio state motto is "With God all things are possible." And if I really believe that, I have to also accept that change is inevitable, and any assumptions I may make can be overturned in an instant.

A life lived in this space, open to all those possibilities, becomes a bit of a dance, or perhaps, to put it another way, you need to keep your sealegs. At any moment the floor beneath you may begin to shake, the rug may get pulled out, the foundations may begin to rock. You have to stay flexible to survive.

Which probably explains why, though my faith definitely went through a fundamentalist stage, I didn't linger there for long. Too much certainty for me: I guess I prefer to leave the certainty to God; it seems presumptuous to assume I know all the answers.

Which makes me smile and think of my friend Althea's blog, which is currently inactive while she finishes her novel and recovers from hip surgery. Her byline holds the essence of today's post: "No answers, but I love the questions." Which may or may not be directly related to these wonderful lines from Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet:

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.