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Very empowering!
I agree with Rilke that we must live the questions in order to live our way to the answers.
In Graham Greene’s ‘The Power and The Glory’, the alcoholic priest is described as a question mark, whereas the Lieutenant is described as an exclamation mark. I asked my friend if I was a question mark or an exclamation mark and she said I was a comma.
you did it again…have you read, “the war of art”? pressfield suggests what you must do on a regular basis…your creativity astounds me!
Hmmm. This is a really interesting cartoon! I keep thinking about it.
Is the desire to convert the question mark based on fear and a need to control – a desire to conquer the question? To conquer in order to own it/consume it?
The older I get, the more content I am to leave that poor old question mark alone. But Lydia’s right – if we live the questions, we find our way to the answers. But perhaps that’s because questions and answers are completely inseparable. Perhaps answers can’t be teased out of the questions because the attempt to separate one from the other creates a sort of hubristic illusion rather than truth.
Very interesting cartoon! I’m off to see if this is available in a t-shirt.
I agree with Vasillia on not replacing the question with an exclamatory order. Replacing with a explanatory period maybe (e.g., is the world spherical or flat) when such can be done.
Hm, I’m not sure that I completely get the above conversation, but here’s my take on this…
“If you add to the words of this prophecy, God will add to your life the disasters written in this book; if you subtract from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will subtract your part from the Tree of Life and the Holy City that are written in this book. ”
Sometimes we just want to shape the Unknown into something that we can grab, we want to make it our own. We start chipping away at the Truth until it is something that we can comprehend. God is incomprehensible, he IS the big questionmark. All we know about Him is what he revealed in Jesus & what is written of Jesus… Very few. The rest? We’ll see…
Gosh, David, I’m starting to get your Z-Theory.
kls said…”God is incomprehensible, he IS the big questionmark. All we know about Him is what he revealed in Jesus & what is written of Jesus… Very few. The rest? We’ll see…”
What about the Jews…wdn’t you have to think that God has revealed something of Himself to validate yr own beliefs? Jesus wasn’t born in a theological vacuum.
Sorry, I meant…”revealed something of Himself [ to them ]“
Seems like it’s somehow both.
But St. Paul said that ‘The heavens reveal the glory of God’. He said that God was visible in nature so that even the Gentiles he was preaching to had a knowledge of God.
Huh?!
I don’t know, Lydia, Rilke seemed to think that naming was all about knowing things and, it seems, there are some things that are un-knowable.
i just attended to a conference in uppsala, sweden, where pastor Kong Hee from Singapore talked about beeing transformed from a question mark to an exclamation mark. So you reminded me of his inspiring message. Keep up the good work!
So what did this Kong Hee mean?
Julia, I agree that some things are un-knowable. I’m not sure that Rilke thought that we would live our way to all the answers in our lifetimes. He was so much the seeker, leaving possibilities open, that my sense is he treasured the un-knowable that drove him on and on…..
I don’t mind not knowing, it’s the not touching I can’t bear.
I agree with Lydia’s take on Rilke. When I read him, I have the sense that he fully embraced the unknowable and in that embrace, found the answer. Not that he found a concrete, rationally recognizable thing with a shape or form that can be named, but something inseparable from the unknowable, and therefore inseparable from the question.
Dude, I’m just seeing this now. Love it! One of your best (in my opinion)…
Thanks robin