Beauty in the questions

The American singer songwriter Iris Dement wrote a song called "Let the mystery be." It is on her Forgotten Angel Album from the early nineties. I discovered her writing from listening to her sing duets with John Prine. She has an old style country voice with a blue grass feel to it. In my thirties I wore that album out listening to it over and over again, and now years later, that is the line I remember, "Let the mystery be.".

As a younger person I wanted sureties and answers. I had so many big questions that I felt certain there might be answers to. The questions remain. The answers continue to be elusive. The difference now though is that I have come to know that the answer is in letting the mystery be. I now think of the questions as fellow travellers. They come along with me, gathering others queries as they go. And they are content in remaining as themselves. They are questions after all and isn't that enough?

For me it is. Many times in my life when I have answered big questions for myself I have discovered that the answers change over seasons and time. As I grow they grow and evolve too. Living with these unanswered questions has been part of my life. In fact they are company, returning again and again. Sometimes they show up on my walks, when I am folding the towels or in the middle of the night. They are part of the story of my life. I have learned to welcome them like old friends who sometimes irritate me.

Rainer Marie Rilke in his book Letters to a Young Poet spoke famously about the questions that accompany us through out life. He said, "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 to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now."

I love this passage. Dement and Rilke share an idea. They both can see that living with the mystery or the questions can be enriching in itself. To so many things there are no answers. There is only faith and belief, and the beauty of love. We form this within ourselves by living out the questions. We seek with open hearts to the mysteries of life. Why do people fall in love? What will I want next year? Should I build it? Will they come? What will I be like when I am old? Will my children be alright? Will I always wonder?  And the questions of course are endless. Sometimes I think it is the lucky ones who do not question, and I have yet to meet them. We are all wonderers. We are all a wonder. And that is what life itself is. It is a wonder too. 

And so now nearly each day I remind myself to  "Let the mystery be" and to "Love the questions", wisdom from a woman and a man who lived a hundred years apart. A reminder that humans have been asking themselves the questions for as long as time. And yet we go forward with such hope and dignity despite the not knowing and this makes us so quintessentially beautiful. Strong and fragile at the same time.