For several weeks, here on this blog, I explored a variety of spiritual practices. Here are some of them: awe, mystery, wonder, enthusiasm, attention, being present, silence, imagination, and listening. As I look over this list, all of them have a sense of openness. Openness to what is within. Openness to what is happening in the world around you. In fact, one of the practices is called openness.
The practices that I have explored speak to what I believe the spiritual journey is about. There are some who would not describe these as spiritual practices. And yet, most likely, they would say that these practices are connected to finding and meaning and purpose in the world. It is that meaning and purpose that lead me to describe them as spiritual practices.
Another spiritual practice I explored was quest or questing. I described how one of the original meanings of quest is to seek game or to hunt. With a quest you are seeking something that will give you sustenance, meaning, life. This type of journey goes far beyond visiting or sightseeing.
Of course, there is a connection between questing and asking questions. Asking questions is part of the journey of faith.
Even if you are not a person of faith, asking questions is part of the journey for meaning and purpose that we all take. Socrates himself said, “One thing only I know, and this is that I know nothing.” These words are not a humble brag about his own wisdom. Socrates, and many other philosophers and great thinkers, are inviting us to think about and even challenge our own beliefs. To do that we have to be willing to ask questions.
“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, Letters to a Young Poet
There is much that I love about Rilke’s words. One, the presence of questions reveals the presence of something unresolved in your heart. Something is happening in the world that seems to offer promise, and yet, it goes against something we have believed for a long time. A crisis in your life makes you wonder about the way you have ordered your life. It is tempting to move toward resolution, but, for a time, can you keep something unresolved in your heart?
Two, answering the question is not just about gaining knowledge; it is about experiencing everything related to the question. What does it really mean to live with the question? In my work as a counselor, I know I have asked a really good question when my client sits in silence for a moment. They are pondering. They are experiencing the question, letting it bounce around inside of them. They are not just looking for an answer. They are letting the question generate even more questions, more wonderings.
My faith journey is grounded in the Christian faith. When I turn to the scriptures I call sacred, I see my spiritual ancestors seeking, exploring, asking question. Abraham tries to bargain with God on more than one occasion. After his night of wrestling with the stranger by the river Jabbock, Jacob does not receive the blessing he demands. Instead, he receives a new name. Israel, one who contends with God. The basic identity of the people of Israel seems to be contending with God. When we are contending with God, when we are living with the questions, we are expressing are spiritual identity.
In his 1993 book, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC, Frederick Buechner offers this advice about scripture: “Don’t start looking in the Bible for the answers it gives. Start by listening for the questions it asks.”
In the religious tradition I grew up in, we were taught to read the Bible for the answers it gives. What would it be like to read the Bible for the questions it asks? Instead of searching and mining the scriptures for truths we can apply to our lives, what if we let the scripture search and mine our minds and hearts?
In the creation stories of Genesis, we have the very first words that God speaks to humanity. Where are you? Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? Yes, all questions. And it doesn’t stop there. The questions keep coming. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” Who do you say that I am?” “What are you looking for?”
We don’t have to come up with our own questions; the stories of faith give us so many. Over the next few blog posts, I thought it would be meaningful to live with some of these questions and see what they can add to our journey of faith.