Years ago one of the UMW Mission School study books was Live the Questions Now. I don’t remember many of the details of the book, but the title has been a mantra for me ever since. It has been an invocation to be in relationship with God in the moment and not to dwell in the past or dream only of the future. Although past and future are important, it is today that we are to know as holy. But, there are always unsolved questions in the heart and the answers seem elusive. I have come to understand that we need to live and love these questions themselves for they are the source, the energy, the stuff of which my life is made. When we embrace the tensions, fear, conflict and vulnerability that entails, we are empowered to live in God’s presence.
As I continue to try to live fully in the moment, I have found my blogging to be helpful. It calls me to think about what is happening in God’s world and my life and where the two meet or don’t meet. Yet, such reflection is a challenge that I fail to accept on too many days. However, I know that even when my soul seems barren God is not through with me and that I will be able to fully live the questions and maybe even know a few of the answers in the todays of my future.
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5 comments:
"It is today that we are to know as holy."
I am delighted that you reminded us of this faith tenent. Every time I remember to apply it, I get sidetracked in a "Catch 22" technicality that, although leaning toward the dreaded rationalization, requires me to think about the degree to which a person, about two miles from home on his faith journey, can effectively grasp the concept of a holy day, or the holiness of today, if he, himself, has not journeyed to a place which fulfills his ill informed idea of holy. The questions then become: Is it a mistake to consider that you, yourself, might, by virtue of being involved in the holiness of a day, be also approaching a state of holiness or rather a state of being able to conceptualize holiness? Do humans actually affect holiness, or would creation retain its holiness with our being just an motion that was tabled? Does a person have to be holy to be able to sieze the day as holy? How are we to "know" that the day is holy without some holiness in us, and unless we process the concept by thinking, which got me in this rut to start with. Is it "the day", "the knowing", or "we" that is holy? Is it the combination of all three with the Grace of God that makes holy? Is it as simple as the fact that Creation could only have come about as a constructive act of pure love devoid of all evil intent that makes all in it holy and therefore should be revered as such daily by all sentient beings? Why is it deemed unorthodox to see a little mysticism in creation and holiness?
Enough!
I have so many more questions on just this topic.
Nope. Enough!
At about this point in my thinking process, I start to feel like Adam Clayton Powell. Nothing left to hang on to but "Keep the faith, baby." Maybe that is, or should be, my answer. The faith. The faith. The faith. Sometimes I am awed by and recognize instantly something that I know is holy, and it happens so fast and so close to the core of being that faith doesn't have time to be considered.
Uh oh!
Here we go again. The questions. The questions. The questions. If holy is actually in the "knowing", and the faith process by which you journeyed to be able to "know" holy and to "know" that it is today that we are to know as holy, then boy do I have a holy lot of questions.
Love your new banner!
Kathy is spot on. How appropriate it is. The divergency so oft' mused by poets and the invitation to choose from two equally beckoning paths are perfectly apparent. The gates promise in one direction, and the patch of sunlight at the zenith of the hill promises in the other.It makes you wonder if maybe sometimes at key points on the journey you can choose no wrong path, or maybe sometimes the wrong path can be just as compelling as the right one. Great pic.
Very Frostian
There is a new introduction to Christianity curriculum entitled Living the Questions 2.0, featuring soem theological heavyweights such as Brueggemann, Fiorenza, Prejean, and Sample and Carcano. It appears to be a 21 week or session journey. It begins with "An Invitation to the Journey" and concludes with "Embracing Mystery." I like the progression ... the further I go on this journey of faith, the more mysterious it is to me. It is one thing to know the facts of God's love as "head knowlege", it is quite another to live within it.
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