Friday Five: Living the Questions

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3dogmom over at the RevGalsBlog offers the Friday Five meme this week, reflecting on what one hopes to accomplish in 2015. She has a list of projects for herself, but also suggests we consider Parker Palmer's questions posted on Krista Tippets blog for "On Being."  He began with Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet:
....be patient with all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves...do not 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 then, gradually without noticing it, live along some distant day, into the answer.


Then Palmer offers these questions:

What can I let go of in order to find aliveness?
What is my next challenge in daring to be human?
How can I open myself up to the beauty in nature and in humans?
Who or what do I need to learn to love next?
What is the new creation that yearns to be born in or through me?
rough me?

These are the questions I am pondering for 2015. This is the year that will mark fifteen years of ordained ministry. It is the year my husband and I will celebrate 30 years of marriage. It is a year of importance in that regard. I turn 58 this year and am pondering what I am being called to do with the remaining years of my life. What will I do after I retire - and I have at least nine years before that is possible. Can I take a sabbatical? And if so, what would it look like?

I have no answers for this Friday Five, just more questions.

On the other hand, I did spend most of December cleaning my house and cleaning out areas of the house. That was a great accomplishment. So I can rest with these questions in a clean and organized space.

Comments

altar ego said…
That Rikle quote is one of my favorites--it speaks a necessary truth about living into ambiguity with a certain trust.

It sounds like your year is a nice blend of marking important milestones and considering what comes next in a larger context than just the coming weeks or months, or even the year. Blessings on all that you have to ponder. And Happy New Year.
1/02/2015 8:53 AM
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