Anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity. It is the fruit of unanswered questions. But questions cannot go unanswered unless they first be asked. And there is a far worse anxiety, a far worse insecurity, which comes from being afraid to ask the right questions—because they might turn out to have no answer. One of the moral diseases we communicate to one another in society comes from huddling together in the pale light of an insufficient answer to a question we are afraid to ask.
~ Thomas Merton, Prologue to No Man is an Island
How should we live in a way which is compatible with being a likeness of God?
~ Abraham Joshua Heschel
I’m always on the look out and always listening deeply for the enduring questions. Often I don’t have to look at all. They simply show up on my front porch one day putting their knuckles to the wood. And when I’m undefended or brave or wise enough, I let them in. Rumi counsels “Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still treat each guest honorably.” But many questions are not meant to become permanent housemates. So discernment is in order.
After awhile I realize which questions are not worth hanging out with anymore, not worth the inner space they take up or the energy they sap from me. Then, I say, “Thank you, I’ve appreciated my time with you, but it’s time for you to go now” and then I show them the door. Though not always immediately successful, I do my best to bid them goodbye and let them go. The good questions, the burning questions, the too hot to handle questions are not meant to go away. Ever. Questions like: Where am I? Who is my neighbor? What am I looking for? By worrying can I add a moment to my life-span? Where do I find joy? What pains my heart? What would I regret if I died tomorrow? What good did I offer to the world today?
Some questions, without being contentious, simply refuse to go away. They are given to us as lifelong companions, faithful traveling partners. Often giving us our space, they hang off stage in the wings. The writer James Thurber recommends—that before we die—we learn what we are running from, and to, and why. A few questions will go with us to our death where perhaps before we cross over we have the opportunity to thank them for their steadfastness, for calling us to the depths, and for how they oriented our lives toward what matters most and for what or whom I am most grateful?
When I was young I collected pennies, Indian head nickels, then baseball cards. One summer I collected sand dollars from Alki Beach and stuck them in a drawer in my bedroom and forgot about them. That is, until the house started to wreak and my mom, on a search and destroy mission, found the putrid culprits and spared us all our odiferous plight. Now, I’m a collector of questions you might say. I have few real answers. I’d rather be a question man than an answer man any day. I’d rather find a teacher, guide, or friend who encourages me to find and uncover the ultimate questions—as well as the question or two that have my name on them— than a teacher who feels the need to give cocksure answers. I think I’ve always known the import of big questions, but Merton made it indelible in me from the first time I read the preface to Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander.
There, in short order, he let’s his readers know he has no desire or need to be The Answer Man for other people. As happened with the jester Dylan, young people especially were seeking out Merton in those days. But in Conjectures he says in essence, I’m happy to share with you my questions if you want to come along. But you’ll have to find your own queries. He knows the only enduring truths are the ones we discover not from what is external to us but from what beckons within.
Of course, especially in practical matters, it’s not that answers are bad or not ever needed or even at times helpful, if not crucial. But existentially and spiritually, in the deep waters in which we swim, answers often can stunt or stop growth, or to mix metaphors turn a throughway into a dead end, let our spirits go lax, close us off from surprises or new possibilities, or make us believe we have “arrived.” In the complexities of daily living and the simple profundities of the spiritual life, I submit, the only answers worth pursuing tend to be the ones that, if and when we find them or when they find us, point us to more urgent, substantive, edifying, and transformative questions. In the spiritual life, the most important questions—like zen koans—are not ones we resolve by means of intellectual computation but rather ones we give ourselves to, surrender, and consent to be broken open by.
Merton contends that we can tell more about a person by the questions he or she asks than by “the ready-made and wholesale answers” they have in their front pocket all set to pull out like a driver’s license as proof of their identity. He writes “To make known one’s questions is, no doubt, to come out in the open oneself.” I’ve always thought this is a good description of prayer—to come out in the open oneself—since all genuine prayer begins with honesty. Prayer involves coming out in the open oneself before the One who thumbed the burning questions like fertile seeds in the deep, dark soil of our being to grow in us so that we grow more intimately and deeply in the Ineffable One from whom all worthy questions come.
It is a worthwhile spiritual practice, I think, not to go more than a week without taking an extended quiet moment to listen for what is the deep question or what are the burning questions that our heart holds fast? Among the many possible sadnesses in life are, one, to value easy answers more than hard questions, two, not to find any significant questions worth living out from or into, or three, to get to the end of our life and to realize we gave ourselves to the wrong questions, to questions that are not worthy of that which is deepest within us.
I believe it is paramount not only for individuals and faith communities, but also for townspeople, urban folk, citizens of nations, and citizens of the earth community to listen for what is being asked of us at this time and in this place. I fear too many are asking the wrong questions, often the small, narrow, self-serving questions. Some are not asking at all. The quality and significance of our lives is commensurate with the questions we ask and have the courage to live. Our character, integrity, and dignity are at stake. As are the well-being and future of future generations and the entire earth community.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS: ~ Goodpeople, take some time this week to listen and ponder—
• Here and now, this week, this day, what are the deepest questions I am being called to live out from or into more daringly?
• Think of someone you greatly respect as a teacher or guide, living or dead. For example, for me it might be someone like Rabbi Heschel, Dorothy Day, Vincent Van Gogh. What question or two, if I were able to meet with them, would I ask that would support me in my commitment to live a life of spiritual depth?
• We need one another. Who is someone with whom you will entrust one or two of the questions that you are hearing and desire to respond to more fully?
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