Love the Questions

A friend gave me Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet at a time when I was full of questions and felt like a failure as a poet and everything else. The book, the inscription, the friendship--they hoisted me from despair to hope.

"Try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a 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." --Rainer Maria Rilke

When I began to follow this principle of loving and accepting questions, I found out that God was with me, holding my hand. I was enfolded with the grace that I could live just so, without answers.

Write down a question that has been troubling you. Now look at your question as if it were abstract art. Don't force an answer. Begin to write whatever appears in your thoughts. Accept these words, too.