Reflections on being curious and asking questions … the experience of the holy season of Lent.
In the holy season of Lent, we are called to the spiritual discipline of preparation. Some part of this is the practice of curiosity and questioning. Entering Lent is wandering into the metaphorical ‘wilderness’ … where everything is primal and makes a difference and you’re likely to be at risk and to get lost … it’s about life and death, about getting down to core values. From that deep place arises the deep questions, the underlying ‘why’ that shapes how we live. So Lent is about living close to the wellspring of creativity and tension, beyond the context that usually makes us comfortable, safe, and secure. Paying attention to Lent becomes an invitation to go into an emotional, intellectual, physical and spiritual place where we have permission to wonder and doubt and explore and grow. — Rev Gail (with credit to Rev Sean Dunker-Bendigo of Madison Church for the inspiration to approach Lent as a series of questions)
Music Video Link: Question by the Moody Blues
Be present.
Make love. Make tea.
Avoid small talk. Embrace conversation.
Buy a plant, water it.
Make your bed. Make someone else’s bed.
Have a smart mouth and a quick wit.
Run. Make art. Create.
Swim in the ocean. Swim in the rain.
Take chances. Ask questions.
Make mistakes. Learn.
Know your worth.
Love fiercely. Forgive quickly.
Let go of what doesn’t make your happy.
Grow.
— Paulo Coelho
On Asking Questions: Being Curious
Always the beautiful answer / who asks a more beautiful question. —e.e. Cummings
Be curious. — Stephen Hawking
Don’t be afraid to look again at everything you’ve ever believed … I believe the more we search, the more we delve into the human teachings about the nature and God of life, which are in fact are the teachings of all the great religions traditions, the closer we come to a mature understanding of the Godself … In other words, doubt, questions, drive us to look at how we ourselves need to grow in wisdom, age and grace. The courage to face questions is the first step in that process. — Joan Chittister
Instead of anxiety about chasing a passion that you’re not even feeling, do something a lot simpler: Just follow your curiosity. — Elizabeth Gilbert
A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea. — John Anthony Ciardi
Curiosity isn’t the icing on the cake. It’s the cake itself. — Susan Engel
We live in the world our questions create. — David Cooperrider
The role of the artist is to ask questions, not to answer them. — Anton Chekhov
I was looking for myself and asking everyone but myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. — Ralph Ellison
Ever since I was a little girl and could barely talk, the word ‘why’ has lived and grown along with me… When I got older, I noticed that not all questions can be asked and that many whys can never be answered. As a result, I tried to work things out for myself by mulling over my own questions. And I came to the important discovery that questions which you either can’t or shouldn’t ask in public, or questions which you can’t put into words, can easily be solved in your own head. So the word ‘why’ not only taught me to ask, but also to think. And thinking has never hurt anyone. On the contrary, it does us all a world of good. — Anne Frank
Judge a man by his questions, rather than his answers. — Voltaire
How do I create something out of nothing? How do I create my own life? I think it is by questioning. — Amy Tan
My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school, “So? Did you learn anything today?” But not my mother. “Izzy,” she would say, “did you ask a good question today?” That difference—asking good questions—made me become a scientist. — Isidor Isaac Rabi
On Lent: Surrendering Ourselves
The reality is that I cannot free myself from the bondage of self. I
cannot keep from being turned in on self. I cannot by my own
understanding or effort disentangle myself from my self interest and
when I think that I can …I am trying to do what is only God’s to do. To
me, there is actually great hope in admitting my mortality and
brokenness because then I finally lay aside my sin management program
and allow God to be God for me. Which is all any of us really need when
it comes down to it … — Nadia Bolz-Weber
… another Lenten season, a time of lengthening days…not just in hours
but in slowness, in taking time to linger over our spiritual lives, over
our identity as a people of faith, over the texts that form us and the
quiet places in which God speaks to us, still. — Kathryn M. Matthews
The big rub is that to surrender my “singularity” (John 12:24) and fall
into this “altogether new creation” will always feel like dying. How
could it not? It is a dying of the self that we thought we were, but it
is the only self that we knew until then. It will indeed be a
“revolution of the mind” (Ephesians 4:23). Heart and body will soon
follow. This is the real “try harder” that applies to Lent, and its
ultimate irony is that it is not a trying at all, but an ultimate
surrendering, dying, and foundational letting go. You will not do it
yourself, but it will be done unto you (Luke 1:38) by the events of your
life. Such deep allowing is the most humiliating, sacrificial, and
daily kind of trying! Pep talks seldom get you there, but the suffering
of life and love itself will always get you there. Lent is just
magnified and intensified life. — Richard Rohr
I think it is good news–because even if no one ever wants to go there,
and even if those of us who end up there want out again as soon as
possible, the wilderness is still one of the most reality-based,
spirit-filled, life-changing places a person can be … What did that
long, famishing stretch in the wilderness do to him? It freed him–from
all devilish attempts to distract him from his true purpose, from
hungry craving for things with no power to give him life, from any
illusion he might have had that God would make his choices for him. …
But it would be a mistake for me to try to describe your wilderness
exam. Only you can do that, because only you know what devils have your
number, and what kinds of bribes they use to get you to pick up. All I
know for sure is that a voluntary trip to the desert this Lent is a
great way to practice getting free of those devils for life–not only
because it is where you lose your appetite for things that cannot save
you, but also because it is where you learn to trust the Spirit that led
you there to lead you out again, ready to worship the Lord your God and
serve no other all the days of your life. — Barbara Brown Taylor
But the historic practices of Lent are Christian. There are three of
them: praying, fasting, almsgiving. These are three things that
Christians should consider doing all the time, but the 46 days of Lent
provide us with an explicit invitation to do them more intentionally. I
say an invitation, because we don’t have to do them, not during Lent,
not ever. … I am going to make an unabashed case for Lent, myself. …
Lent is a chance to uncork the bottle, to unclog our spirits from what
is stifling them, to sample the mystery. It is a chance to own that we
do not wholly own ourselves, but acknowledge that God has a claim over
us. We work so hard for radical equality in our lives—for equal
marriage, equal pay for equal work, an end to bigotry of all
varieties—and we sometimes delude ourselves, as religious people, that
radical equality extends to our relationship with God … Taking on a
Lenten discipline means surrendering to a higher power, it means placing
ourselves under God’s authority and protection. But here’s the rub: to
place ourselves under God’s authority is a reminder that we are under no
other authority, or at least that all those other authorities are less
than God’s. The church, the state, our remote fathers, our overbearing
mothers, our inept boss who gets paid more than we do, our snarky
coworkers, the popular crowd, the opposing football team, the opposing
political party, Al Qaeda, alcohol, fried foods, chocolate, caffeine,
porn, late-night cable. Whatever our addictions, whatever our
self-medication devices, whatever our overlords of fear and control,
none can match the power of God our Father and Mother, if we choose God
as our God. To claim that we are in a direct relationship with our
Creator, to join with that Creator and Sustainer in an act of
self-disciplining, is an act of resistance. It’s a boycott of all that
is body-wounding and soul-killing. It is a radical re-ordering of our
priorities, and a reclamation of our God-given will and strength … …
What might you do, this Lent, to rend your heart, to give God an
opening? What might you do to make God-shaped space within your heart, a
space that will invite you to call on the name of God more frequently,
to share the experience of your brother Jesus in the wilderness, to
uncork the Spirit and let it flow freely, to release yourself from rage
or addiction or the tyranny of lesser gods? What can you give up, or
take on, as an act of resistance against the authorities that don’t
deserve any claim over you? — Molly Phinney Baskette
Reflection on thin places, climbing & coming down from summits, and transfiguration (themes from Luke)
One way or another, we find ourselves standing in the presence of holiness. In thin places … sometimes beautiful, stunning, awe-inspiring … sometimes terrible and life-changing. Thin places are locations or experiences, in the world, when heaven touches earth. They are places and times in which we cannot stay or linger or make our homes … because they exist as both ephemeral and eternal. In such places and times, what will we leave behind? And what will we bring with us back into our daily living? — Rev Gail
That when glory shines,
we will bring it back with us
all the way, all the way, all the way down. — Jan Richardson
On Thin Places, High Places
Thin places are transparent places or moments, set apart by the quality
of the sunlight in them, or the shadows, or the silence, or the
sounds—see how many variations there are? What they have in common is
their luminosity, the way they light an opening between this world and
another … It works to make you more aware of the thin veil between
apparent reality and deeper reality. It works to pull aside the veil for
just a moment, so you can see through. Sometimes I know I’m in a thin
place because it feels like the floor just dropped two or three levels
beneath my feet and set me down in a deeper place. They can open up just
about anywhere … But thin places aren’t always lovely places, and
they’re not always outdoors. Hospital rooms can be thin places. So can
emergency rooms and jail cells. A thin place is any place that drops you
down to where you know you’re in the presence of the Really Real—the
Most Real—God, if you insist. — Barbara Brown Taylor
To put it simply: the Holy Spirit bothers us … moves us … makes us
walk … And we are like Peter at the Transfiguration: ‘Ah, how
wonderful it is to be here like this, all together!’ … But don’t
bother us. We want the Holy Spirit to doze off … we want to
domesticate the Holy Spirit. And that’s no good. because he is God, he
is that wind which comes and goes and you don’t know where. He is the
power of God, he is the one who gives us consolation and strength to
move forward. But: to move forward! And this bothers us. It’s so much
nicer to be comfortable. ― Pope Francis, Encountering Truth: Meeting God in the Everyday
On Climbing & Coming Down Again
I truly believe that there is no greater metaphor for life than climbing mountains. The mountains have a way of stripping the mind down to its basic senses and forcing us to live in the moment. In order to do this we must respect everything around us and maintain balance. If you guys truly value your lives, then you must live them to the fullest. We have planned this trip for quite some time and have known from the beginning that it would be dangerous. To turn back now is useless. To turn back in the face of a fierce storm or worsening conditions is obvious. We must expect the worst and hope for the best. If we do not summit because we make the decision to turn back, then we will have learned yet another lesson. If we do not summit because we did not try, then we will learn nothing. I hope we all realize that if we believe mountaineering is about getting to the top of mountains, then we are treading a path of foolery. Mountaineering is about everything BUT getting to the top. It is about teamwork, courage, fortitude, good decision making, determination, etc. Getting to the top is merely the culmination of effort and circumstance. — Mountaineer, not attributed.
We should refuse none of the thousands and one joys that the mountains offer us at every turn. We should brush nothing aside, set no restrictions. We should experience hunger and thirst, be able to go fast, but also to go slowly and to contemplate. — Gaston Rébuffat
Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are nought without prudence, and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste; look well to each step; and from the beginning think what may be the end. — Edward Whymper, Scrambles Amongst the Alps
The aim of the mountaineer, if he wishes to be an artist in the full sense of word, is neither escape nor “the search for the absolute” as some have claimed, but rather seek that place where “the mystic remains silent and the poets start to speak towards men”. — Bernard Amy
The … trend in mountaineers is not the risk they take, but the large degree to which they value life. They are not crazy because they don’t dare, they’re crazy because they do. — Lisa Morgan
Just a reminder – a guidebook is no substitute for skill, experience, judgement and lots of tension. — Charlie Fowler
It’s a round trip. Getting to the summit is optional, getting down is mandatory. — Ed Viesturs
Definition: Alpinism is the art of going through the mountains confronting the greatest dangers with the biggest of cares. What we call art here, is the application of a knowledge to an action. — René Daumal
As I hammered in the last bolt and staggered over the rim, it was not at all clear to me who was the conqueror and who was the conquered. I do recall that El Cap seemed to be in much better condition than I was. — Warren Harding
Trying to connect to the moment, that move, that breath – this is what I have been striving for; finding the oneness that can exist with all the things around and inside me. — Ron Kauk
Relaxation, acceptance, and keeping open mind are key. … If I can’t do a move I merely accept that I haven’t discovered the right sequence… I will try to do it … different ways … until I find something that does work. That’s what I mean by keeping an open mind. — Lynn Hill
If there’s only one thing I would like to say, this is: enjoy the process. Don’t worry about the result. Climbing must be fun. — Marc Le Menestrel
In the Presence of Holiness
What can we say beyond “Wow”, in the presence of glorious art, in music so magnificent that it can’t have originated solely on this side of things? Wonder takes our breath away, and makes room for new breath. — Anne Lamott
Love enables us to see things that those who are without love cannot see. — Thich Nhat Hanh
An awake heart is like a sky that pours light. — Hafiz
We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through it all the time. — Thomas Merton
Show us the glory in the grey. — George MacLeod
I understood that I was being shown the future: shards of what would come to be. Often, I cried out for the pain of it. But other times, I was comforted, because I saw, for an instant, the pattern of the whole. — Geraldine Brooks, The Secret Chord
…he
liked his transcendence out in plain sight where he could keep an eye
on it — say, in a nice stained-glass window — not woven through the
fabric of life like gold threads through a brocade. — Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age
The glory of God is a human being fully alive; and to be alive consists in beholding God. — Irenaeus
Fortunately,
the Bible I set out to learn and love rewarded me with another way of
approaching God, a way that trusts the union of spirit and flesh as much
as it trusts the world to be a place of encounter with God. — Barbara Brown Taylor
Life’s splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its
fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is
there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by
the right word, by its right name, it will come. — Franz Kafka
It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor
gray ember of Creation and it turns to radiance–for a moment or a year
or the span of a life. And then it sinks back into itself again, and to
look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire, or
light….Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like
transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little
willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it? — Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
And these Things, which live by perishing,
know you are praising them; transient,
they look to us for deliverance: us, the most transient of all.
They want us to change them, utterly, in our invisible heart,
within – oh endlessly – within us! Whoever we may be at last.
Earth, isn’t this what you want: to arise within us,
invisible? Isn’t it your dream
to be wholly invisible someday?
― Rainer Maria Rilke
Commentary on the Transfiguration: Ascending and Coming Down Again
If the great spiritual journey is to have any meaning whatsoever in our
times, we, you and I, too, will have to wade into the throngs of hurting
people on every plain of this planet, listening, listening, listening
to the prophet Jesus, and exposing to people the underlying causes of
all the wounding in this world and healing what we touch. — Joan Chittister
A transfiguration, a morphing, a realization had to take place, even in
Jesus, before he became the Anointed One in which everything else
cohered and held together (see Colossians, Ephesians, and the prologue
to John’s Gospel). The resurrected Jesus is the Christ. The Risen Christ
is Jesus but also bigger and beyond Jesus’ individual form and lifetime
… But it is one universe and all within it is transmuted and
transformed by the glory of God. The whole point of the Incarnation and
Risen Body is that the Christ is here—and always was! But now we have a
story that allows us to imagine it just might be true. Jesus didn’t go
anywhere. He became the universal omnipresent Body of Christ. That’s why
the final book of the Bible promises us a new heaven and a new earth.
(Revelation 21:1), not an escape from earth. We focused on “going” to
heaven instead of living on earth as Jesus did—which makes heaven and
earth one. It is heaven all the way to heaven. What you choose now is
exactly what you choose to be forever. God will not disappoint you. — Richard Rohr
The beauty that emerges from woundedness is a beauty infused with
feeling; a beauty different from the beauty of landscape and the cold
perfect form. This is a beauty that has suffered its way through the
ache of desolation until the words or music emerged to equal the hunger
and desperation at its heart. It must also be said that not all
woundedness succeeds in finding its way through to beauty of form. Most
woundedness remains hidden, lost inside forgotten silence. Indeed, in
every life there is some wound that continues to weep secretly, even
after years of attempted healing. Where woundedness can be refined into
beauty a wonderful transfiguration takes place. ― John O’Donohue
The new heavens and the new earth are not replacements for the old ones;
they are transfigurations of them. The redeemed order is not the
created order forsaken; it is the created order – all of it – raised and
glorified. ― Robert Farrar Capon
Reflections on journeys and the New Year
Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.― Matsuo Bashô
Choices— Tess Gallagher
I go to the mountain side
of the house to cut saplings,
and clear a view to snow
on the mountain.
But when I look up,
saw in hand,
I see a nest clutched in
the uppermost branches.
I don’t cut that one.
I don’t cut the others either.
Suddenly, in every tree,
an unseen nest
where a mountain
would be.
On the New Year
I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re doing something.— Neil Gaiman
Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering, ‘It will be happier.’ — Alfred Lord Tennyson
And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been. — Rainer Maria Rilke
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right. — Oprah Winfrey
Seeking God
“Help us to find God,” the seeker begged the Elder. “No one can help you there,” the Elder answered. “But why not?” the seeker insisted. “For the same reason that no one can help a fish to find the ocean.” The answer is clear: There is no one who can help us find what we already have. — Sufi Story (recounted by Sr Joan Chittister with her commentary at the end)
Once upon a time, a seeker ran through the streets shouting over and over again, ‘We must put God into our lives. We must put God into our lives.’ “Ah, poor soul,” an Elder smiled wanly. “If only we realized the truth: God is always in our lives. The spiritual task is simply to recognize that.” — Sufi Story (recounted by Sr Joan Chittister)
The movement in our relationship to God is always from God to us. Always. We can’t, through our piety or goodness, move closer to God. God is always coming near to us.― Nadia Bolz-Weber
I searched for God … Finally, I looked into my own heart and there I saw Him; He was nowhere else. ― Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi
Blessing of the Magi (excerpt)
— Jan Richardson
… You thought arrival
was everything,
that your entire journey
ended with kneeling
in the place
you had spent all
to find.
When you laid down
your gift,
release came with such ease,
your treasure tumbling
from your hands
in awe and
benediction.
Now the knowledge
of your leaving
comes like a stone laid
over your heart,
the familiar path closed
and not even the solace
of a star
to guide your way.
You will set out in fear.
You will set out in dream….
We cannot show you
the route that will
take you home;
that way is yours
and will be found
in the walking.
But we tell you,
you will wonder
at how the light you thought
you had left behind
goes with you,
spilling from
your empty hands,
shimmering beneath
your homeward feet,
illuminating the road
with every step
you take.
God on the Mountain: Reflections for this week
Acts of God … where God is and where God is not — reflections on natural disasters and the aftermath — mountain, wind, fire, quake and silence: themes from 1 Kings. Where do you find ‘acts of God’ in your life? What evokes the presence of the sacred for you?
Holiness, not in the fire, wind or quake, but in the silence that comes after: It is about sweeping in when we are too comfortable and moving us out of those places we cling to when we fear the unknowns and try to avoid the pain and injustice around us. It is about empowering us to do the things that so many others – and even sometimes our own systems – have told us we cannot do because of our gender, age, or economic situation, our education status, color of skin, or sexual orientation. It is about equipping ALL of us to be prophets by speaking truth, spreading love, and fighting for justice and equality for all of God’s children. — Nadia Bolz-Weber Continue reading “God on the Mountain: Reflections for this week”
Story: Dancing Before God
Meditations on dancing in the presence of holiness, themes from 2 Samuel.
This dance is spontaneous creation, a jazz … skillful relationship to change … effortless presence in action. We cannot change the nature of change, but we can choose the way we relate to it. — Dancing Freedom dancers, Dharma Dance