More Questions than Answers

Discipline of curiosity

Earlier this week, I was doing some writing that sent me looking for something in an old sermon. I remembered it wrong as I often do but it lead me to read the entire last sermon to my first church.

For those that have preached these services, you know how hard these sermons are. It is hard to hold all of the grief and delight. All those emotions came rushing back to me as those good people still hold a special place in my heart. There are also things I’ve forgotten like the fact that they used to call my manner of leading any spiritual formation group by asking what they deemed Elsa Questions.

These were the big questions. The impossible questions that made us only ask more questions to each other about what it might mean.

It’s a space I’m comfortable in. I like the questions and where they lead. I welcome the wondering even though I know that even for me there is also a season for answers. There is a time for every matter under heaven and sometimes that means we need to be certain. We need to know rather than wonder.

It isn’t always easy to find those answers. We often think that wisdom lies elsewhere outside of ourselves. We don’t really believe that we can hear that wisdom all on our own. And maybe we can’t.

Maybe we do need help from mentors, coaches and spiritual directors because it is so hard to hear that still small voice within us. We are used to turning outside where spiritual direction creates space to look within and notice what is happening within your own heart and mind.

This poem from the Poetry Foundation arrived in my email recently and it moved me. I saved it not knowing when I would return to it but I heard echoes of it as I prepared to meet with one of my directees this week and so it was what began our time together.

We talk about life so often that we forget that talking about what makes life meaningful and worth celebrating is an act of prayer. All those questions are the prayers. We might get answers. That would be nice and there might be times when we really need those answers. We don’t always get the answers though. Sometimes we just get more questions and somewhere in all that wondering we learn more about God. We get to learn more about how God loves us and what makes us want to drink in more of this life.

My directee called it a discipline of curiosity and I want to coin that term. Let us all live to be so curious about ourselves and our God.

My inbox is full of poetry that I’m constantly saving to my Evernote files but I know that not everyone loves poetry. Some find it hard to access and might need help on how to read a poem.

If you are a pastor type looking to find more time for questions and daydreaming in your life, you might welcome this idea for one worship bulletin for the whole summer.

I’m doing an absolutely terrible job of singing my way through this month in Endless Song but I did begin creating this Spotify playlist for the songs that come into my head as prayers. What would you add? What songs are you singing this month?

Last but not least, I’m still working on these simple retreat resources and look forward to releasing them before the summer officially begins.

If you are interested in spiritual direction and are interested in a first conversation with me, please reach out or go ahead and book an appointment here. I am currently welcoming new directees and would be delighted to explore the holy threads of this life with you.