Questions and Answers
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart.
And try to love the questions themselves.
Do not seek the answers that 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, Letters to a Young Poet, 1929
I’ve been in sort of a funk for the past few days. It isn’t a hurricane-related funk; it’s a lot more complicated and strange than that, and it won’t be easy for me to describe. I guess it is some weird combination of satisfaction and monotony, two words that surprised me when they appeared in my life this week.
I should begin by explaining that I like to make things happen. I’m a sucker for starting something. Not just anything, mind you, but when something seems worth doing – and when no one else knows where to start – I still possess enough naiveté and arrogance to go for it. I don’t know why, but this is simply part of what makes me “me.”
And I hate maintenance. I love sitting and dreaming and planning and then acting on those plans. My favorite material possessions in this world would be an ink pen, a blank legal pad, and a vision. But I find little enjoyment in maintaining something that has already been created. I can do it, but it is not characteristic of my soul.
When 2006 approached, I was convinced that one goal sufficed for all areas of my life. Beyond any doubt, I knew that my goal was survival. I wanted Hurricane Katrina to have taken her best shot at everything I knew, and when she was finished, I wanted the different areas of my life to have withstood her attack. For my workplace, I wanted there to still be a group of people gathering at our church’s building on Washington Avenue. For my community, I wanted my Habitat for Humanity affiliate to still be about the business of addressing poverty housing. For my family, I wanted us to emerge on the other side still standing strong. Together.
And we have. All of these things. It is odd to feel as if you have achieved all of your goals for a year by mid-February, but that is what has left me in a funk.
I used to have this grand vision for our church family, like a megachurch hooked on social justice, but my vision has changed over the years. I’m pretty happy with what we have now in lots of ways: a place where people from diverse backgrounds (religious, racial, family-type, socioeconomic, and age) can come and be accepted, a place where the leadership is encouraging and not discouraging to people hoping to follow Jesus, and a place that will be there for you when storms attack. Not to claim perfection, but in my new way of seeing “church,” I’m suddenly feeling a new sense of satisfaction.
I still have the same grand vision for Habitat for Humanity of Jackson County, but my role is beginning to change. We are taking on staff, and my term limits on the board are drawing to a close. I feel as if we are in a relay race, and it is nearly my time to hand off the baton. And having withstood the ferocious attack of Katrina that nearly knocked us out of the race, I’m proud to be handing off in stride.
And I’m in love with my family. I love the three ladies in my house with an overwhelming love. I am proud of my wife – of everything she is and stands for. And I’m proud of both my daughters and their directions in life. I am so proud it hurts to realize what they faced this past year and to see them happy of all things. They are heroic to me, and I treasure the character they displayed to the world over the past five months.
So I’m in a funk. You’d think a guy who faced a big storm of life would be giddy to have the satisfying sense that things are suddenly clicking on all cylinders, but you’d forget how weird I am. To reference Rilke’s poetry, there is something quite “unsolved” in my heart, and I’m trying to learn to love the questions. Not to settle into a fat and happy rut of life, but to live the questions. To chase answers.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, referring to Charles Lindbergh’s historic trans-Atlantic flight, once said, “In the spring of ’27, something bright and alien flashed across the sky. A young Minnesotan who seemed to have had nothing to do with his generation did a heroic thing, and for a moment people set down their glasses in country clubs and speakeasies and thought of their best old dreams.”
It is time for me to dream again. What about you?
And try to love the questions themselves.
Do not seek the answers that 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, Letters to a Young Poet, 1929
I’ve been in sort of a funk for the past few days. It isn’t a hurricane-related funk; it’s a lot more complicated and strange than that, and it won’t be easy for me to describe. I guess it is some weird combination of satisfaction and monotony, two words that surprised me when they appeared in my life this week.
I should begin by explaining that I like to make things happen. I’m a sucker for starting something. Not just anything, mind you, but when something seems worth doing – and when no one else knows where to start – I still possess enough naiveté and arrogance to go for it. I don’t know why, but this is simply part of what makes me “me.”
And I hate maintenance. I love sitting and dreaming and planning and then acting on those plans. My favorite material possessions in this world would be an ink pen, a blank legal pad, and a vision. But I find little enjoyment in maintaining something that has already been created. I can do it, but it is not characteristic of my soul.
When 2006 approached, I was convinced that one goal sufficed for all areas of my life. Beyond any doubt, I knew that my goal was survival. I wanted Hurricane Katrina to have taken her best shot at everything I knew, and when she was finished, I wanted the different areas of my life to have withstood her attack. For my workplace, I wanted there to still be a group of people gathering at our church’s building on Washington Avenue. For my community, I wanted my Habitat for Humanity affiliate to still be about the business of addressing poverty housing. For my family, I wanted us to emerge on the other side still standing strong. Together.
And we have. All of these things. It is odd to feel as if you have achieved all of your goals for a year by mid-February, but that is what has left me in a funk.
I used to have this grand vision for our church family, like a megachurch hooked on social justice, but my vision has changed over the years. I’m pretty happy with what we have now in lots of ways: a place where people from diverse backgrounds (religious, racial, family-type, socioeconomic, and age) can come and be accepted, a place where the leadership is encouraging and not discouraging to people hoping to follow Jesus, and a place that will be there for you when storms attack. Not to claim perfection, but in my new way of seeing “church,” I’m suddenly feeling a new sense of satisfaction.
I still have the same grand vision for Habitat for Humanity of Jackson County, but my role is beginning to change. We are taking on staff, and my term limits on the board are drawing to a close. I feel as if we are in a relay race, and it is nearly my time to hand off the baton. And having withstood the ferocious attack of Katrina that nearly knocked us out of the race, I’m proud to be handing off in stride.
And I’m in love with my family. I love the three ladies in my house with an overwhelming love. I am proud of my wife – of everything she is and stands for. And I’m proud of both my daughters and their directions in life. I am so proud it hurts to realize what they faced this past year and to see them happy of all things. They are heroic to me, and I treasure the character they displayed to the world over the past five months.
So I’m in a funk. You’d think a guy who faced a big storm of life would be giddy to have the satisfying sense that things are suddenly clicking on all cylinders, but you’d forget how weird I am. To reference Rilke’s poetry, there is something quite “unsolved” in my heart, and I’m trying to learn to love the questions. Not to settle into a fat and happy rut of life, but to live the questions. To chase answers.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, referring to Charles Lindbergh’s historic trans-Atlantic flight, once said, “In the spring of ’27, something bright and alien flashed across the sky. A young Minnesotan who seemed to have had nothing to do with his generation did a heroic thing, and for a moment people set down their glasses in country clubs and speakeasies and thought of their best old dreams.”
It is time for me to dream again. What about you?
posted by Al Sturgeon | 8:13 AM
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