Topic of the Week

Uncertainty

Last week, I spent some time with a dear friend who’s going through a tough time as he struggles with multiple life changes that have left him reeling, yet pregnant with possibility. Like so many people these days, the rug has been pulled out from under his life. He’s lost his job, his marriage is ending, and for the first time as an adult, he’s struggling financially.

While I was able to give him some practical advice about getting support, finding a job, and providing resources for his family, our conversation soon moved deeper. We talked about how challenging times require a need for patience and the ability to be with ambiguity when you don’t know the answers and you’re feeling frustrated or afraid.

I don’t know about you, but it’s challenging for me to be patient, to live with uncertainty, or to sit still in a storm. I’m restless, impatient, and far more interested in getting answers than being with questions. But, therein lies the beauty of transition and change. It forces us to grow, to strengthen our spiritual maturity, and to fall out of the comfortably numb rut that eventually leads to regret and unbearable pain.

Our conversation reminded me of the well-known passage from Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke. If you’re experiencing a difficult time, do yourself a favor and use this quote to help stabilize the rough waters of your busy mind. Take your time and read it with your heart, not your head. It’s a message that gently reminds us that life is about staying with and living the journey, not waiting to arrive at a destination.

Have patience with everything
unresolved in your heart and try to
love the questions themselves, as if they
were locked rooms, or books
written in a very foreign language.
Don’t search for the answers,
which could not be given to you
now, because you would not be
able to live them. And the point
is to live everything. Live the
questions now. Perhaps then, someday
far in the future, you will gradually,
without even noticing it, live
your way into the answer.

~Rainer Maria Rilke

Take Action Challenge

Print out the above passage and sit with it at least once a day this week. Notice what Rilke says to your heart…

This week’s video is amazing – a mesmerizing piece of multi-dimensional art. I posted it on facebook.com/cherylrichardson a while ago, and Lisa from Sydney sent it to me this week and reminded me to share it with all of you. It’s of Kseniya Simonova, winner of Ukraine’s Got Talent, drawing a series of pictures on an illuminated sand table showing Germany conquering Ukraine in WWII. She brings calm, then conflict. If you haven’t seen it, you must. It’s stunning… thanks Lisa!

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=vOhf3OvRXKg