“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 now 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.” - Rainier Maria Rilke
A couple of weeks back I wrote about the agrarian sensibility. The anchor of that piece was an interview I linked to with Nick Offerman on the On Being podcast. There was piece of that interview that stuck with me but that I didn’t mention in that earlier newsletter. The host, Krista Tippett, eluded to the Rilke quote above and asked Nick what question he was living now.
I grew up as a Quaker, as many of you know, and we have a thing about questions. We call them queries, and they’re not meant to have an answer, necessarily. (Imagine being a kid who was raised with the idea that questions aren’t necessarily meant to have answers. It really explains so much about me.) Queries are meant to prompt reflection, to put us in a state of perpetual listening, which is a state of perpetual openness, assuming one is a good listener. (I wouldn’t say I always am. I would say I try.)
My daily life is stuffed to the gills at the moment. When things are this busy it’s easier to, let’s say, go a little easy on the integrity practice. Who’s got time for that? Returning, even briefly, to any means of open-ended reflection backs me out of the flurry of doing that seeks to consume me to a position with a little more perspective, a little wider view. I can get grounded there. I can remember what matters.
So, I’m hoping we can do some reflection together today, invite in some of those mysterious, unanswerable questions. Maybe get grounded as we head into the weekend. Because I need that, honestly. Maybe you do, too.
My question these days is, How do I hold it all with clear-eyed love?
My question has to do with our obligations to each other, to the generation before us, and the generation after. Where does the imperative to live our own lives collide with our obligations to others? What’s the difference between neglecting our needs and deemphasizing them (and ourselves) in the context of a larger world? Where is the line between self improvement and self involvement?
Such beautiful questions, and particularly poignant at the life stage where you are sandwiched between aging parents and rapidly aging-into-adulthood children. There's a fluidity of role and obligation that is very destabilizing. And I think there's a gender piece, for me anyway, about finally aging out of active daily mothering to find that I don't know how to comfortably prioritize myself anymore. I don't know what selfish even reasonably means anymore.
How do we find peace in the midst of all this chaos?
My life feels like it's in limbo, caught between fear and hope. There's this constant balancing act, trying to find stability in my relationship while the world seems to question our right to love. So, the big question for me right now isn't just about getting by. It's about how to truly live, how to hold onto love, and stay true to ourselves when everything around us feels so uncertain and often unkind.
Love is never not worth putting it at the center, but it can be so hard when the love you have isn't one that fits the standard narrative. All of a sudden society's love of love seems to evaporate and you're faced with hate, at worst, instead.
I hope you all are finding ways to live and love on each other with both defiance and joy.
Gloria Horton-Young and Asha Sanaker: Your comments and this "Let Your Life Speak" about Quakers, Rainer Marie Rilke, and Questions -- not answers, these speak deeply and spiritually to me, and I thank you BOTH.
Gloria Horton-Young: You are such a worthwhile person and who could not like "She who stirs the storm" and your beautiful poetry.
Asha Sanaker: Questions are infinitely more interesting than answers. Our universe is circa 14.5 billions of years old. Already circa 1856, Walt Whitman wrote that "I contain multitudes . . ." and that "There are billions of suns left."
Rilke, Whitman . . . How beautiful is the work of John Milton in taking Biblical myths and giving them the majesty and beauty of blank verse.
Both of you speak so very deeply to my own spirituality.
I was originally drawn to Substack through Heather Cox Richardson and Joyce Vance, two of the best.
One poet and writer who is spiritually beautiful and speaks to me is Somiah Nettles, and her "Victorian Voices" substack can be found here:
Here in her own words is Somiah Nettles and everything she says in this paragraph speaks to me:
"Hello there! I'm Somiah Nettles, a poet (a Victorian one at that) and classical pianist residing in the San Francisco Bay Area. I'm a sophomore in college studying English and creative writing, and I've had nothing but excellent experiences with my English and creative writing professors thus far. I’ll have you know that Emily Dickinson is my favorite poet, and Sergei Rachmaninov is my favorite composer."
I have listened to Rachmaninoff's own virtuosity on almost all the recorded discography the master left behind. As a Pianist, Rachmaninoff was beautiful, as in his interpretation of the Carnival by Robert Schumann.
But I will say, I have moved to Dmitri Michaelovich Shostakovich and Bèla Bartok and Paul Hindemeth.
But still, Somiah Nettles has so rich a poetic spirituality she shares, and I love sharing her Substack.
Gloria Horton-Young: As soon as I figure out how to "Post" instead of merely "Note," Somiah Nettles will be one of the first persons I will introduce or review.
That'll be a while, since I will be a couple weeks in Europe during early April.
Your own notes and postings are food for my own spirit, and I love the Spirit and image of "She who stirs the storm!"
It has to do with the shape of my next book, which, I am finding, is about the shape of me as a writer—finding words for the thing that is mine to share with the world. "A state of perpetual listening, which is a state of perpetual openness": so much yes!! This is very close to what I'm writing about right now. That Quaker approach is close to my heart.
I’m also very much in a questioning process about the proper shape of the narrative for the book I’m working on. Whether or not there is a single, definitive answer, I hope I can settle on *an* answer soon. Good luck with defining yours!
Oh, Asha. This was a quote we found written in my mother’s hand on an index card, in her desk, when we gathered after her passing. Who knows when she wrote it, but it was so touching to find, to know that it meant enough to her to write down where she could see it. We put this quote in the handout for her Memorial Meeting. I now have it in a place of prominence on my own desk… and do often ponder it. Lately it does seem harder to consider things like this, with life seeming to fly by without any time for reflection…but it is perhaps the most important thing, to find that time for pondering & reflection, to make what little sense we can of our journey through the world…so, let me see… I am living into the question of whether or not my dreams are more, or less, attainable with a lifelong partner - and if so, is it the one I am with now? And also, what is my purpose in this life? And who is my true community as I live into that purpose? Thank you for your words, the reminder of this quote, and to ask us all about our questions. ❤️
I love the thought of you having that quote written in your own mama's hand to look at. It makes my heart ache, but in a good way. We do come from good, earnest seekers, don't we?
I'm glad we get to carry them forward and be in community together, asking these big questions in company. <3
What will the next stage of life be? Where will it be? What will my purpose in it be? How do I prepare for a future I can't yet know? How do I hold my life lightly enough to let it evolve into what it needs to be? How do I weather the coming losses? What are the best ways to love now?
Oh my, what perfect timing. I always love your writing. I am all tied up in the questions right now. Why am I a teacher? Where should I be teaching? Should I be teaching? What should I be teaching? So many things... So many things from my past are emerging in new and interesting ways. I know there is a message or maybe there isn't a message. As you know, I am the same age as you and I find myself wandering around wondering why I worry so much about all of this. Why can't I just accept that I am trying by best and doing the work? At any rate, I appreciate you so much. Always.
I think wondering what it’s all about and what our purpose is, is how it works for most of us at our age. I’ve always admired your commitment to your students, but there’s other ways to serve young people. I’d love to hear any answers you come up with. ❤️
Thank you for opening the question with no expected answer. That saves me from banging my head against the wall. My question has been “am I learning the lessons I came into this lifetime to learn? What more do I need to learn?” Also, can I learn these lessons the easy way this time? Please? No answer really just living day to day the best I can that day.
Love the invitation to question without expecting an answer. What a wonderful framing and deep question. I’m deep in the mothering stage of life, what I call the ugly and sensible shoe stage, so I wonder how can we as a family live prophetically, truly live our values, when the culture and context of America feels so alien to me where kids kill other kids, and everyone starts medicating themselves and numbing their problems and the election and our government’s lack of backbone has me reeling … how can I stay here when the vitriol people feel for Muslims just gets more explicit? This place that was my home (New York city) no longer feels like home.. how can I support my parents as they age there? I cannot leave them but I also feel like I cannot stay here forever waiting for anything to change
I think I have a lot of questions, but the one that is most loudly pounding on the door, wanting to be let in, is “What will I do if I allow myself to truly hear, see and know what I know, and what if what I need to do is say ‘NO’ before I can say ‘YES’?” I feel like I am making choices right now based on what I don’t want, rather than what I do want. And that is actually helping me make good choices right now, but…how will I know what I am actually walking toward, rather than just knowing from what I am walking away?
This question came to my conscious awareness last weekend. How do I help my ancestors find forgiveness for each other so that I can live in peace and in my power inside.
As a biracial woman, holding oppresor and oppressed in the same body has created so much discord in my life. I learned one way to be with the discord for the first half of my life. Be white and pretend that my blackness does not exist. As a light skinned biracial woman that was easier than it is for many.
I carry many wounds from that way of being. I am learning a new way to be in the world that doesn’t cut off my other parts. In the learning I feel anger, resentment, and grief for all that I learned to suppress. Parts of me desire to annihilate my whiteness for the oppression it has willingly complicit in and benefited from. Parts of me are afraid that I could do it.
And, that is not my path to healing. The only way to heal this is for all of my parts to forgive themselves and each other. How to create space inside and out for this metabolization (is that even a word?) is the question I am living right now.
Big questions, and big love to you. Is it helpful at all to remember that every one of your ancestors, but particularly your biological parents, carried both oppressor and oppressed within them? As in, your father was Black, but also male. Your mother was White, but also female. Who is oppressor and who is oppressed morphs depending on the aspect of your identity you're focused on.
This is not to diminish the importance of finding some place of peace between your differently-racialized parts. Only to say that when I've needed to find forgiveness for someone who did me harm, one of the ways I was able to do that was to recognize how I *also* enacted harm when I had the power to do so. I also had to remove that person's ability to harm me any further. You can't undo the harm your ancestors experienced at each other's hands, but you can stop allowing different parts of you to harm each other.
It’s true. I take all of these things into consideration at different times in my process. And it’s a SLOW process despite all of my internalized urgent desire to fix it. :)
My question has to do with our obligations to each other, to the generation before us, and the generation after. Where does the imperative to live our own lives collide with our obligations to others? What’s the difference between neglecting our needs and deemphasizing them (and ourselves) in the context of a larger world? Where is the line between self improvement and self involvement?
Such beautiful questions, and particularly poignant at the life stage where you are sandwiched between aging parents and rapidly aging-into-adulthood children. There's a fluidity of role and obligation that is very destabilizing. And I think there's a gender piece, for me anyway, about finally aging out of active daily mothering to find that I don't know how to comfortably prioritize myself anymore. I don't know what selfish even reasonably means anymore.
I hear you on all that. Tectonic shift.
How do we find peace in the midst of all this chaos?
My life feels like it's in limbo, caught between fear and hope. There's this constant balancing act, trying to find stability in my relationship while the world seems to question our right to love. So, the big question for me right now isn't just about getting by. It's about how to truly live, how to hold onto love, and stay true to ourselves when everything around us feels so uncertain and often unkind.
Love is never not worth putting it at the center, but it can be so hard when the love you have isn't one that fits the standard narrative. All of a sudden society's love of love seems to evaporate and you're faced with hate, at worst, instead.
I hope you all are finding ways to live and love on each other with both defiance and joy.
Gloria Horton-Young and Asha Sanaker: Your comments and this "Let Your Life Speak" about Quakers, Rainer Marie Rilke, and Questions -- not answers, these speak deeply and spiritually to me, and I thank you BOTH.
Gloria Horton-Young: You are such a worthwhile person and who could not like "She who stirs the storm" and your beautiful poetry.
Asha Sanaker: Questions are infinitely more interesting than answers. Our universe is circa 14.5 billions of years old. Already circa 1856, Walt Whitman wrote that "I contain multitudes . . ." and that "There are billions of suns left."
Rilke, Whitman . . . How beautiful is the work of John Milton in taking Biblical myths and giving them the majesty and beauty of blank verse.
Both of you speak so very deeply to my own spirituality.
I was originally drawn to Substack through Heather Cox Richardson and Joyce Vance, two of the best.
One poet and writer who is spiritually beautiful and speaks to me is Somiah Nettles, and her "Victorian Voices" substack can be found here:
https://stingingnettle.substack.com/
Here in her own words is Somiah Nettles and everything she says in this paragraph speaks to me:
"Hello there! I'm Somiah Nettles, a poet (a Victorian one at that) and classical pianist residing in the San Francisco Bay Area. I'm a sophomore in college studying English and creative writing, and I've had nothing but excellent experiences with my English and creative writing professors thus far. I’ll have you know that Emily Dickinson is my favorite poet, and Sergei Rachmaninov is my favorite composer."
https://stingingnettle.substack.com/p/hello-there-preface
I have listened to Rachmaninoff's own virtuosity on almost all the recorded discography the master left behind. As a Pianist, Rachmaninoff was beautiful, as in his interpretation of the Carnival by Robert Schumann.
But I will say, I have moved to Dmitri Michaelovich Shostakovich and Bèla Bartok and Paul Hindemeth.
But still, Somiah Nettles has so rich a poetic spirituality she shares, and I love sharing her Substack.
Thank you. 🙏 Your words are a balm. What a talent - Somiah should be praised and exalted.
Gloria Horton-Young: As soon as I figure out how to "Post" instead of merely "Note," Somiah Nettles will be one of the first persons I will introduce or review.
That'll be a while, since I will be a couple weeks in Europe during early April.
Your own notes and postings are food for my own spirit, and I love the Spirit and image of "She who stirs the storm!"
Asha,
These help.
“I am thankful for all of those who said NO to me. It’s because of them I’m doing it myself.” – Albert Einstein
“When life gives you lemons, squirt someone in the eye.” – Cathy Guisewite
It has to do with the shape of my next book, which, I am finding, is about the shape of me as a writer—finding words for the thing that is mine to share with the world. "A state of perpetual listening, which is a state of perpetual openness": so much yes!! This is very close to what I'm writing about right now. That Quaker approach is close to my heart.
I’m also very much in a questioning process about the proper shape of the narrative for the book I’m working on. Whether or not there is a single, definitive answer, I hope I can settle on *an* answer soon. Good luck with defining yours!
Same, Asha!
Oh, Asha. This was a quote we found written in my mother’s hand on an index card, in her desk, when we gathered after her passing. Who knows when she wrote it, but it was so touching to find, to know that it meant enough to her to write down where she could see it. We put this quote in the handout for her Memorial Meeting. I now have it in a place of prominence on my own desk… and do often ponder it. Lately it does seem harder to consider things like this, with life seeming to fly by without any time for reflection…but it is perhaps the most important thing, to find that time for pondering & reflection, to make what little sense we can of our journey through the world…so, let me see… I am living into the question of whether or not my dreams are more, or less, attainable with a lifelong partner - and if so, is it the one I am with now? And also, what is my purpose in this life? And who is my true community as I live into that purpose? Thank you for your words, the reminder of this quote, and to ask us all about our questions. ❤️
I love the thought of you having that quote written in your own mama's hand to look at. It makes my heart ache, but in a good way. We do come from good, earnest seekers, don't we?
I'm glad we get to carry them forward and be in community together, asking these big questions in company. <3
❤️❤️❤️
What will the next stage of life be? Where will it be? What will my purpose in it be? How do I prepare for a future I can't yet know? How do I hold my life lightly enough to let it evolve into what it needs to be? How do I weather the coming losses? What are the best ways to love now?
Oh my, what perfect timing. I always love your writing. I am all tied up in the questions right now. Why am I a teacher? Where should I be teaching? Should I be teaching? What should I be teaching? So many things... So many things from my past are emerging in new and interesting ways. I know there is a message or maybe there isn't a message. As you know, I am the same age as you and I find myself wandering around wondering why I worry so much about all of this. Why can't I just accept that I am trying by best and doing the work? At any rate, I appreciate you so much. Always.
I think wondering what it’s all about and what our purpose is, is how it works for most of us at our age. I’ve always admired your commitment to your students, but there’s other ways to serve young people. I’d love to hear any answers you come up with. ❤️
Thank you for opening the question with no expected answer. That saves me from banging my head against the wall. My question has been “am I learning the lessons I came into this lifetime to learn? What more do I need to learn?” Also, can I learn these lessons the easy way this time? Please? No answer really just living day to day the best I can that day.
Amen to that! Just muddling through day by day over here, too.
Love the invitation to question without expecting an answer. What a wonderful framing and deep question. I’m deep in the mothering stage of life, what I call the ugly and sensible shoe stage, so I wonder how can we as a family live prophetically, truly live our values, when the culture and context of America feels so alien to me where kids kill other kids, and everyone starts medicating themselves and numbing their problems and the election and our government’s lack of backbone has me reeling … how can I stay here when the vitriol people feel for Muslims just gets more explicit? This place that was my home (New York city) no longer feels like home.. how can I support my parents as they age there? I cannot leave them but I also feel like I cannot stay here forever waiting for anything to change
I think I have a lot of questions, but the one that is most loudly pounding on the door, wanting to be let in, is “What will I do if I allow myself to truly hear, see and know what I know, and what if what I need to do is say ‘NO’ before I can say ‘YES’?” I feel like I am making choices right now based on what I don’t want, rather than what I do want. And that is actually helping me make good choices right now, but…how will I know what I am actually walking toward, rather than just knowing from what I am walking away?
This question came to my conscious awareness last weekend. How do I help my ancestors find forgiveness for each other so that I can live in peace and in my power inside.
As a biracial woman, holding oppresor and oppressed in the same body has created so much discord in my life. I learned one way to be with the discord for the first half of my life. Be white and pretend that my blackness does not exist. As a light skinned biracial woman that was easier than it is for many.
I carry many wounds from that way of being. I am learning a new way to be in the world that doesn’t cut off my other parts. In the learning I feel anger, resentment, and grief for all that I learned to suppress. Parts of me desire to annihilate my whiteness for the oppression it has willingly complicit in and benefited from. Parts of me are afraid that I could do it.
And, that is not my path to healing. The only way to heal this is for all of my parts to forgive themselves and each other. How to create space inside and out for this metabolization (is that even a word?) is the question I am living right now.
Big questions, and big love to you. Is it helpful at all to remember that every one of your ancestors, but particularly your biological parents, carried both oppressor and oppressed within them? As in, your father was Black, but also male. Your mother was White, but also female. Who is oppressor and who is oppressed morphs depending on the aspect of your identity you're focused on.
This is not to diminish the importance of finding some place of peace between your differently-racialized parts. Only to say that when I've needed to find forgiveness for someone who did me harm, one of the ways I was able to do that was to recognize how I *also* enacted harm when I had the power to do so. I also had to remove that person's ability to harm me any further. You can't undo the harm your ancestors experienced at each other's hands, but you can stop allowing different parts of you to harm each other.
Profound advice.
It’s true. I take all of these things into consideration at different times in my process. And it’s a SLOW process despite all of my internalized urgent desire to fix it. :)
One of my favorite meditations from one of my favorite poets 🧡