From Where I Sit

Being a thoughtful person of faith these days is becoming more and more complicated. It’s not that people today don’t care about such things, on the whole they do. But, when in the name of faith we see narrow, judgmental bigotry, when in the name of faith we see the violent rage of sectarian wars, when in the name of faith we see anti-intellectualism and the rejection of modern science; one wants to throw up the hands and walk away.

Add to that the new gods of sports, entertainment, and consumerism, add to that an awareness of the wisdom from other great world religions, add to that the sheer exhaustion of trying to make ends meet; one begins to wonder what it all means. One is tempted to lament, as did William Butler Yeats after WWI: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre the falcon cannot hear the falconer; things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” Tinkering with forms and creeds and institutions isn’t going to work: there are too many questions.

If this doesn’t speak for you, allow me to speak for myself. I am finding much to question in matters of faith these days. So imagine my delight when the summer issue of Weavings” arrived with a series of articles on “Living the Questions.” The very first article was entitled, “Leaning into an Unknown.” Elaine M. Prevallet, a Sister of Loretto living in Kentucky, begins with a quote from John Mogabgab: “There is no path to God that is not first God’s path to us.” Oh! Of course! We do not ‘find’ God. God has already laid out the path and beckons us to become a pilgrim on the way.

When we walk with God, there is a dialogue of questions. So much in our world makes us wonder, if not about God, then about those who presume to speak for God. Prevallet writes: “We struggle to find our moorings as the ground shifts beneath our feet - a feeling enhanced by earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis, floods and droughts, and endless suicidal wars - which our planet now suffers. Increasingly large numbers of churchgoers find themselves feeling like strangers, feeling abandoned, in a kind of collective ‘dark night.’”  Yep!

It’s OK to have questions about our faith, about God! Indeed, if we do not have questions, our god is too small! Trying to live in certainty is a dead end street. It wraps us up in ourselves. At best it is narcissism. At worst it is idolatry. God is larger than our efforts in faith, larger than our creeds, larger than our churches, larger than our worship and our music. Faithfulness requires living the questions, requires walking humbly with God, requires trusting that “God will whittle away at our narrow identities, our self-centeredness our attachments.”

Living the questions is nurtured by disciplines and practices. Among the practices that Prevallet suggests are “... attentiveness, generosity, prayer, meditation, and reading.” She is convinced that trust and love will keep stretching us toward “... the grandeur of what we know we do not know.

There are times, even in matters of faith, when it seems that there are questions everywhere and that the center cannot hold. Rather than trying to cling to something that is no longer working or even grasping for new fads that don’t work either, maybe we just ought to live with the questions for a season. The beginning of wisdom is often starts with knowing what we do not know, being mindful of the world around us, discovering that God has been there all the time. 

It is in such a discerning attitude that we come to realize that God is not afraid of our questions, even welcomes them, and invites us to live into the unknown that they reveal. In a complicated world that is often a challenge to our faithfulness, living the questions enlarges our vision and helps us to become pilgrims on the path which God has already set in our midst, a path where God joins us and shows us the way that leads to life and faith.