Live the Questions - Write into the Answers

by Barbara E. Parsons, Mary C. Morrison

Overview

". . . be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. . . Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Today, people write journals who are not necessarily religious seekers, but who find great power in the practice of journal writing. Says Burghild Nina Holzer in A Walk Between Heaven and Earth: “A quest is a journey into the unknown. The writing process, any creative process, is also a journey into the unknown. A journal then is both the quest itself and a record of the quest. This is what makes it such an exciting adventure for me. It is also what makes the journal such a fine learning process, I trace my own steps on the page.”

Product Details

BN ID:	2940148172475
Publisher:	Pendle Hill Publications
Publication date:	02/05/2014
Series:	Pendle Hill Pamphlets , #354
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	30
File size:	113 KB

About the Author

Mary Morrison is a writer and teacher who divides her time between Pennsylvania and Vermont, Formerly a teacher of the Gospels course at Pendle Hill, she still leads Bible study groups at the Kendal at Longwood retirement community where she lives with her husband, Maxey. A compulsive writer since the age of seven, Mary has kept a journal for many years. She is the author of six Pendle Hill pamphlets, a book, Jesus: Sketches for a Portrait, and many articles and book reviews in Episcopalian and Quaker publications and several books. Her book, Approaching the Gospels Together details the approach to Bible study carried out at Pendle Hill over its history. Jesus: Sketches for a Portrait shares the fruit of years of leading studies of the gospels. Roxana’s Children: the Biography of a Nineteenth-Century Vermont Family, was published by the University of Massachusetts Press in 1995; Let Evening Come, a reflection on aging, was published by Doubleday in 1998.

Barbara Parsons spent nearly fifteen years at Pendle Hill, first as a student, then on the administrative staff. She also taught writing classes for Pendle Hill and led workshops in writing and poetry. Before coming to Pendle Hill, she taught English in public schools. She now lives in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, and works in the areas of public relations and marketing with Kendal retirement communities. Barbara has kept journals and notebooks for many years, has written numerous short essays, and aspires to spend more time with her personal writing.

Much of this material was used in a course at Pendle Hill in the fall of 1995. The authors thank the participants in that class for their valuable contributions and for their willingness to explore their journeys and their questions.