Podcast Episode 16 Conversation Starter: Living The Questions
Download the Conversation Starter PDF
In this episode, Carrie and Parker explore Jeanne Lohmann’s beautiful poem, “Questions Before Dark.” If you’d like to have a conversation with one person or a group of folks about the podcast and the poem, we suggest you first listen to the podcast individually or together. Then, when you sit down to talk, here are some ideas for opening up the conversation.
“Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart… Try to love the questions themselves… Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given 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 answers.”
Download the Circle of Trust Touchstones from the website of the Center for Courage & Renewal—they are designed to create safe space for significant conversations. Using these touchstones as guides for speaking and listening is a wonderful way to invite deeper dialogue and open hearted exploration of any topic.
Read the touchstones aloud as a group. Take a minute or two of quiet reflection before entering into the conversation.
Questions Before Dark by Jeanne Lohmann
Day ends, and before sleep
when the sky dies down, consider
your altered state: has this day
changed you? Are the corners
sharper or rounded off? Did you
live with death? Make decisions
that quieted? Find one clear word
that fit? At the sun’s midpoint
did you notice a pitch of absence,
bewilderment that invites
the possible? What did you learn
from things you dropped and picked up
and dropped again? Did you set a straw
parallel to the river, let the flow
carry you downstream?Each person choose one question contained within the poem and reflect upon it with the group. Proceed around the circle giving each person at least 5 minutes to talk about the question.
If time allows, each person can choose a second question to reflect upon.
Other Possibilities
Read this poem aloud each evening for a week and journal on one question contained in the poem.
Post the poem where you will see it during the course of a day (e.g., refrigerator, mirror, office cork board).
Sit in a quiet place. Think about what it means make decisions that quiet. Breathe in, “Quiet my heart.” Breath out, “With one clear word.”