Sitting with the questions

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot more about what it means to live with unanswered questions.

Whether it’s the unfolding tragedy that is the deterioration and possible death of our planet through climate change, or family and friendships becoming a like a confusing and messy ball of twine in my life or the depressing state of some religious contexts offering little hope for the world because they are too embroiled in their internal machinations…there are more questions that answers in my world right now.

What does it mean to live with the questions?

Recently I was reading that Jesus asked more questions than he gave answers to. To be exact, he asked 307 questions. He is asked 103 and he only answers 3 of those. He was the great questioner rather than a solutions person.

Theologian Derek Flood helpfully writes about the practice of “faithful questioning” rather than “unquestioning obedience” The former employed by Jesus and the latter by the religious elite.

How do we live with questions when we don’t have answers? I’ve alway been someone who likes to tick off a to-do list. This energises me. I’ve recently realised how addicted I am for my emotional well being on this practice. So it means that in seasons where there are no answers (and let’s face it this is most of the time!) my emotions can become a grey cloud over my life.

I’ve found these two quotes helpful. One very well-known and the other perhaps not as much.

“Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer,” – Rilke

“I am suddenly aware of my weariness, my fragility, and my deep uncertainty about what is happening to me and where I am heading in my life. Have I even begun to reckon with the depth of the sadness I carry within me or its sources? I know I have not. But here in this place I begin to realise that I must open myself to these questions, that this is part of why I am here.  

The shared silence. The intimacy. The sense of relief that we can let go, at least for a little while, of every inclination to explain or account for what is happening to us. We cannot explain it anyway. Sometimes we can hardly say a word. This life we are living: ineffable. Better to acknowledge this and relinquish the illusion that somehow, somewhere, there are words sufficient to encompass our experience.”- Douglas Christie

I’m sitting with this. How do we honestly live with questions without needing to have the answers in order to live well? It seems to me the messier our world gets the more we will need to see and practice this as a spiritual discipline.

And more than this, how do we then thrive in this context rather than accept it begrudgingly as the new normal?

Could it mean more of living in the moment, being grateful and embracing curiosity, enchantment and mystery? All of these are spiritual practices we could become more used to engaging with today.

Rev. Dr Karina Kreminski is Mission Catalyst – Formation and Fresh Expressions for Uniting Mission and Education. This is one of many articles from her blog This Wild and Precious Life.