The below quote has always been one of my favorites since I first read this amazing book in 1999. It has been a wise guide in my life, and my former classmate and friend, Bernie Newton, reminded me of it’s importance in our work as therapists. The stance that Rilke suggests is not only very helpful to our work, but should be helpful to all of us in life.
This is an excerpt from Letter Four:
“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 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.”
–Maria Rainer Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
What do you think of what Rilke has to say?
What sticks out to you?
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I agree with the poet. There are some questions that I have had for some time now about my relationship with the Lord and my life. I have had to constantly come to the point where I trust Jesus with as much faith as He has placed in me, remember His character and embrace the difficulty. There is a reason. That reason must be that I am not ready for the answer.