Live the Questions

Words of Torah, funny anecdotes about my students, rants about education policy, and observations on politics, progressive Judaism, activism, and culture will all make appearances on this blog. Each post will end with a question for the reader; please respond if you feel moved.

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Live the Questions with General Anna

...I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you 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.

--Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903 in Letters to a Young Poet

So who is General Anna, anyway? General Anna is a character from an amazing children's novel called The Pushcart War by Jean Merrill. It is a paean to grassroots activism and is also hilarious as all get-out. Go read the book.

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