Living the Questions

"Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves... Don't search for answers 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."

Those lines from one of my favorite poets, Rainier Maria Rilke, are how I want to approach the somewhat radical lifestyle choices I’ve been making the past few years. I’m not making these choices specifically because I want to be a radical. Nor do I want to become someone who is defined just by the unusual list of things she doesn’t do. Rather, I want to be a part of a community in ongoing questioning process about these issues and the trial and error kinds of choices we need to make to live our way into the answers.

Here are 5 of the current questions I’m asking and trying to live my way into the answers to, including at least one resource of another individual or organization inspiring me by living the same questions:
#5 Are we making conscious choices about what we produce, what we buy and how we dispose of it all? It's the Sustainability question--are we taking out more than we're putting in or the planet can sustain, and are we prepared for the consequences of that?http://www.sustainableworks.org/
#4 What is our favorite American past-time of eating out costing us--in our health, our budgets, our environment and our treatment of one another? And along those same lines, how far removed have we become from the actual production, processing and preparation of what we put into our bodies daily?http://www.circleofresponsibility.com/
#3 Do we think all the way through the implications of technological advances that seem to bring us more personal ease before we choose to implement them?For example, we're just beginning to ask hard questions about cell phones. Are scientists correct in their concerns that our cell phones are contributing strongly to colony collapse disorder for the bees--which has implications for some of the richness of life we take for granted, like nuts and fruit and flowers? http://omega.twoday.net/stories/3545166/
#2 What is our dependence on gasoline-powered vehicles costing us in all areas of life? What about the economy, the ecology, the political scene, our physical health and our socialization and engagement in daily community? http://www.newurbanism.com/ for pedestrian lifestyles and urban renewalhttp://www.altcarexpo.com/ for alternative car and transportation options
#1 And finally, the question I think is both the hardest to answer and the most fundamental: if we know there are some on the planet who have nothing, how do we justify lifestyles of excess and accumulation, owning more than we need or not sharing what we have with the whole?The Irresistible Revolution: Living As An Ordinary Radical by Shane Claiborne (founder of http://www.thesimpleway.org/ )

My own journey took me into living the questions #1&2 pose before any of the others. But in general I find that is backwards in order to even progressive cities such as the one where I live; those two are very unpopular questions! #5&4 are much more in vogue already—though I think the final two can make a far greater dent in the big picture faster if enough people begin to ask them. Individuals cannot be fully transformed without the systems and structures they live in being transformed. And in recent years our systems and structures as a civilization have begun to shift in ways that make questions #5 & 4 much easier than ever before. If all I am reading and observing on my travels is accurate, I believe we’re not far from the day when the other three questions will be easier for others to live their way into the answers on. But the systems and structures in which the individuals reside cannot be transformed without enough of those individuals asking the key questions and coming together to live into the answers. So for now that’s my invitation. Let’s begin to not only ask these questions; let’s begin to live them. Perhaps as Rilke suggests we may find ourselves someday living these questions right into their answers.