The Power of Asking Deeper Questions

Linda Reith ( March 4, 2007)

"Who do you think you are?" Mostly that question is used to rein us in. It's asked to give us our comeuppance, to put us in our place. It's a question that begs to be reclaimed and befriended. It's the most important question we can ask and needs to be revered, handled gently, given tenderness and nurturing. It's not a threat, but an invitation.

Odin took on the challenge of that question and risked his life for a glimpse of the answer. Nine days of upside down contemplation inducted him into humility, which is the first prerequisite for truly asking questions. How many times have we asked a question, just so we can expound on our take on the answer? Unitarians like to talk. We are known more for our opinions than our listening. Odin was not naturally passive either. He was aggressive, a leader; the one everyone turned to for the answers. It takes a lot to turn from giving to receiving.

I was drawn to this topic of "Deep Questions" by an interview with Alan Jones, Dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco last year. He said the purpose of religion was to help us ask deeper questions. As I read his book "Reimagining Christianity", I was a bit disappointed, because he seemed to be mainly in a dialogue with conservative Christianity and their take on the Bible being the Word of God, complete received wisdom, the answer. That's a good dialogue to have, but I didn't feel it related to me, not being remotely tempted to take the Bible as the last word. I was past that; I thought in my arrogance.

He spoke of the process of conversion, that conversion was life long, an uncovering of layers and aspects of pregnancy, suffering and communion. Again the language didn't draw me. I never wanted to be converted in the first place and certainly didn't have to get over any illusion of being born again and therefore saved. Or did I? Comfort is often bought at the price of stagnation. Had I settled into some illusion of confidence that I was O.K., all right Jack, and didn't need any Good news to save me? Had I secluded myself in a tight little circle of like minded people and settled in for the long haul? I think that's pretty tempting and pretty common.

Unitarianism by eschewing any guru, by celebrating the book title, "If you meet the Buddha on the Road Kill Him" sometimes denies itself the real challenge of going deep and risking belief. We miss the point of that book which was not to dismiss the Buddha, but to urge us to stay committed to not knowing and to searching. But does our outsideness help us search? I believe we miss the power of conversion. Jones comments that he is unwilling to give up 2000 years of iconography. He says asking if the virgin birth is literally true is less significant than asking what it means to us to see the Madonna and Child as symbol of the divine. What is opened in us by a mother and child as the symbol of the power beyond knowing?

Refusing quick answers and rote learning, we are left to struggle to find ways to move forward, to move deeper, to accept guides. We lack a profound myth to move us and hold us while we search. Odin found the runes, saw them as a connection to a larger knowing, introduced them to the people to encourage them to ask questions. People would look for guidance from the throwing of the runes, hoping for an understanding of the meaning of this particular moment, for a way to live more in tune with the larger picture, to feel less alone, less afraid, less lost.

Alan Jones speaks of the need for mysticism, explaining that mysticism is "seeing the connection between and among things." He says that, "for mystics, the world is a sacred place ? a view we are only just recovering." Our dismissal of words like divine, sacred, even god or goddess limits our ability to connect with the mystery of existence. Jones reminds us that the only way to talk about the sacred is by metaphor. He says, "Metaphor's power lies in bringing two disparate things together for us to move forward in our feeling and thinking to a place where we could not go before." Odin's world tree is a powerful metaphor for understanding that when we hang ourselves upside down in searching and sacrifice, we do it from a living ancient reality, we are not alone. His gift of the runes expresses a desire for connection not only from the human side, but from the larger energy for which we struggle to find metaphor, because so many of the metaphor's already in use are tainted by an authoritarian close minded tradition. G.K. Chesterton explains that there are two kinds of people: those who know they are ruled by dogma and those who don't. What is our dogma? Is it helping us search? Is it breaking us open, so we can grow? Does it provide a sense of belonging that sustains the pain of uncertainty?

The metaphor of the interconnected web is one that Unitarians treasure. The challenge is to transform it from a passive image to an invitation or a charge. The recent shooting rampage at Dawson College in Montreal shocked us all. The horrific self indulgent images presented by the murderer on the internet repel us. How do we share the web with the murderer and the others who resonate with Vampirefreak.ca? What does he have to teach us about our own disenchantment, our nihilism? There is no away. We are him and we were part of creating him as he is part of creating us.

It is important to ask questions about this tragedy, to avoid knee jerk reactions. To help us ask deeper question Jones provides this framework. He says life is all about three aspects:

• pregnancy/newness /the Madonna,
  
• suffering/change/Jesus
  
• communion/connection/the Holy Trinity

Certainly the murderer in Montreal pushes us to a new place, though it's hard to seem pregnancy in this image. His horrific grasp of power through guns was a perversion of pregnancy. It is human to insist on making a difference and we will be powerful in negative ways, if we can't connect to something positive. Think about the tantrums of two year olds. His suffering, if we embrace it can connect us with our own suffering and allow us to engage in change. His desperation lends an urgency to what we might notice only as disquietude or unease. Buffered as we are by our privilege, we tamp down our consciousness that the status quo is intolerable. As we move out of them and us and look for solidarity, we step into communion. It is tempting to discard violent young men as the source of their own problems. We want simply to blame them, throw them in jail, but they are a symptom of unbalance in our way of living. They uncover the contradictions implicit in a stumbling transition from patriarchy to a more inclusive paradigm, from a society that benefits from labour to one of knowledge. Complicating our thinking and reaction to them helps us avoid slipping into being judgmental and ultimately cynical. Stepping us into compassion and commitment.

People on the edges, edgewalkers, are our allies and teachers in this process of engaging deeper questions. I think of the enlivening that has come to our community as we have engaged in the process of being a welcoming community for gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgendered people. Because they are endangered by the status quo, they are more able to be critical, more able to see the transformations required. Situated in the middle we miss the signs of danger and like the frog in the slowly heating water we rest in our denial till it's too late. Lesbians were at the forefront of creating shelters for abused women. The extreme danger they faced as lesbians pushed them to develop an analysis of what on earth was going on. The joy they had in each other signaled that there are whole other new possibilities. They noticed the emperor not only wore no clothes, but he had no power if we took it to ourselves. This year the board of the Guelph congregation is blessed with a lesbian social activist member and she is extending our awakening in important ways. After her second board meeting, when I had let the agenda swamp our commitment to making all congregational gatherings be consciously spiritual, she challenged me to keep my promise that joining the board would be an opportunity for spiritual growth. She expected me to live up to my promise.

Now we are challenged to become much more connected to transgendered people. The Welcoming Congregation Phase 11 invites us to be part of this next powerful wave of liberation. If we open to a sense of connection and communion with people who affirm that gender and sex are separate, then our appreciation of our own complexity is affected in ways we cannot imagine until we do it. Not long ago my daughter was reading to me as I drove her back to school in Ottawa and the article she chose gave voice to the feelings of a mother as she struggled to affirm her daughter, or I should say her son's, choice to cut off her (his) beautiful breasts. Surely we have much to learn from people with that much courage, that much commitment to self. If, in our self interest to have relationship with such powerful people, we create a community that prevents even one transgendered person from being destroyed by despair, from suicide, then that will fill us with a wonder too precious to name.

Naming is a form of power. Let us enter the process of naming and questioning with vigor and commitment. Let us enter into relationship knowing it will transform us and keep us real. Let us find allies who by their very being and living take us into brand new questions. The old slogan that says if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem remains powerfully true. Being part of the solution means engaging in discovering how our choices are complicit with oppression and destruction. It means as well discovering ways to push the transformation forward and in doing so feel the power and the joy of being deeply alive. Odin sacrificed his authority in order to connect with a far greater authority. He led us from the status quo into mystery. He demonstrated the power and promise of asking deeper questions.