by Katie Guertin-Anderson
| Today on our Lenten journey and in solidarity with those at the Abbey, we meet Patience… |
| During our Lent Community Night in February, we introduced the Lent theme for this year: Digging Deeper Together. In the skit, Paul and I compared Lent to going on a mysterious journey into a dark and unfamiliar cave. We talked of the uncertainty of such a journey and the mishaps and stumblings that could happen along the way. We named our fears, hopes, frustrations and lamented not knowing exactly where we were going or what we were doing there. The Lenten journey is, if nothing else, an invitation into uncertainty. And uncertainty, if nothing else, requires enormous patience (and trust, but we will get to that tomorrow J). I am reminded of one of my favorite passages from the beloved poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, on the gift of embracing uncertainty. In a 1903 letter to his protégé, the 19-year-old cadet and budding poet Franz Xaver Kappus, Rilke writes: I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear friend, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to 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 (from Letters to a Young Poet). Maybe you are at the point in your Lenten or spiritual journey where you have more questions than answers. Trust me – you are in great company. The best questions – the really important ones – do not have easy answers. These kinds of questions call for deep reflection, observation, tenacity, perseverance, and PATIENCE. For some of our questions, our only option is to live them, inhabit them, and make them our homes for now. That takes time and the willingness to stay on the journey, even when we are not sure where we are, where we are going, or what we are looking for. I do believe the poet’s words – that eventually, we will live our way into the answers… |
