“Living the questions”
I have attempted to read Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet with an open mind and heart many times. Each time I hear something new. Now his admirers have an exciting new translation by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows. Krista Tippett, host of On Being podcast invited Ms. Macy and Barrows to join her June 24, 2021 for a conversation about their new translation.
Other individuals might be intimidated by the daunting task of unearthing new gems in a work which has been so thoroughly studied. Yet these two women have managed to do just that. This morning when I listened to the podcast for the third time, I was struck by the phrase “living the question” and by their translation of what Rilke has to say about gender. “One day, the girl and the woman who don’t define themselves in masculine terms but as something in themselves, female humans, will require no other completion. This enormous shift will transform the character of love, which is hampered today by the resistance of men, and generate a relationship from human to human, not from man to woman…the love that consisted of two solitudes that protect, border, and greet each other. “(Page 59,60)
One must remember that Rilke was a 27-year-old young man when writing these letters nearly 120 years ago. Yet, as if true for all prophets, he was confident it is the questions and not the answers which are responsible for the life force we call creativity and euphemistically call gods. Ms. Tippett uses the phase “living the questions”.
So many of us humans find a temporary solace in the illusion of answers. We know what the gods demand of us; who is worthy and unworthy; which “sins’ are criminal, and which are permissible if done with authority. These answers also define the limits of gender, love, and all human relationships. They assign neat, socially constructed chains of labels such as gender. Gender is often confused with sex -whether someone is male. female or non-binary. The socially constructed chains of gender take on the sacredness of the gods and, as such, are protected with the sword of righteousness enforced by such organizations as churches, the NRA, and the manufacturers of lethal weapons.
As Ms. Macy and Ms. Barrows obverse during the conversation with Ms. Tippett it has been tempting for females to take on the socially constructed masculine role rather than in Rilke’s terms to be “female humans”. It seems to me often we males, to shed the chains of masculinity, have also taken on the chains of socially constructed femininity.
Any time one sets aside the question and settles on an answer one risks the danger of slipping on a costume which hides or camouflages the authentic self; the self which is always in the process of becoming. The question, for example, of who is one’s best is an ever-evolving process of opening to one’s possibility as one greets and encounters the day. Once freed from the chains of gender one is free from a thousand other imposed socially constructed labels meant to define or, perhaps, control one.
Regardless of whether one is male or female one can claim the talents and behavior which creatively adds to rather than subtracts from the creation of community. Only then can an authentic community be realized; one which values each contribution as equally important. This is reflected in in the sharing of talents and resources. The nurse, surgeon, janitor, IT person, cook/chef, comedian, teacher, childcare provider, and prophet are not viewed as more or less than. Gone are the social constructs of gender, sexual orientation, formal education, or other labels. Gone are the answers. The only question is: :What is my best contribution to this collective dance today?”
When I arrived in the community of Hoonah, Alaska David, one of the elders, said to me, “I will teach you. You cannot possibly know anything.” He was not insulting me. Even though I was then 31 and had a graduate degree he knew that I could not know anything. David knew that whether carving a fishhook, picking berries, fishing, fulfilling his role as an elder or any other tasks he had to be open to the community of people, animals, the wind and all the forces of nature - the choreography of the gods. As was equally true for my Buddhist teacher the primary question is: “What do I need to do this moment to be more fully open to this collective dance.”
Rilke talks about generating relationships from human to human. Although he is writing to the young poet who is initially thinking in terms of romantic love one has the sense that Rilke understood that once one focuses on the questions and not answers one allows for the possibility of unlimited love which can blossom, die and continually be reborn.
Written June 29, 2021
Jimmy F Pickett
coachpickett.org
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