Wednesday Wisdom

In my recent email letter, I shared that my summer question is: How am I letting my relationship with the Divine change or shape me?

Since I articulated this question, it has been rolling around in my mouth like a sweet peppermint candy. I feel like a kid who is trying to see how long she can hang on and not bite down and break the candy into pieces.

I want to let the question dissolve slowly in my mouth, delighting in its taste, savoring it, and absorbing what is being offered. I am allowing the question to unfold,  practicing “living the question” as Rilke invites us to do:

“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 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, 1903, in Letter to a Young Poet. 

So what is it like to live a question. What is like for me live this question: How am I letting my relationship with the Divine change or shape me?

Recently, my husband and I found ourselves in a place where we needed to cross a bridge in our relationship. This is actually a wonderful place to be in a marriage: a time to shift some habits and patterns, and clear out some old stuff in the closet.

As I walked through this experience, through some anger, some sadness, and some resistance, I arrived at a bridge that needed to be crossed. I faced it, and I could feel the pull in me to turn around. I met my resistance, during many restless nights, with the sweet taste of my question lingering:  How am I letting my relationship with the Divine shape or change me?

The more I surrendered into my question, the more I began to hear my heart calling out for me to become more generous and compassionate towards myself and my husband. I became acutely aware that crossing this bridge would lead me on the path of compassionate love.

Now, a new question has manifested: How do I live this path of compassionate love?

The questions are unfolding, the peppermint candy is dissolving, and I  am listening to the deep interior voice of my heart.

Practice:

• What is the question in your heart?
• How are you being patient and listening?
• Are you being invited to live the path of compassionate love?