LIKE THE TEACHER II

I am still thinking about yesterday’s Journal entry on ‘Like the Teacher.’ Jesus encouraged his disciples to learn his ways, He finally told them: “I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them at the present time” (John 16:12). There is just some stuff we are not ready for yet. It reminded me of a Rilke saying:

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.”
(Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) Austrian poet in ‘Letters to a Young Poet’)

In the case of Jesus, he told his followers they would need to receive the Holy Spirit to know further teaching and practice. This is near to Rilke in this sense: “Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them.”

Even with the Holy Spirit of truth (John 16:13) “to guide us into all truth,” it appears to be a lifetime of learning, growing and becoming.

“For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” Jesus