Our Search

I am re-reading a book by Elizabeth Johnson* who is one of my favourite authors in the context of spiritual enquiry. In the part I want to quote from she starts by asking the question: 'What is human nature?' One of the qualities that she suggests in answer is that we ask questions:
  
This is a universally human thing to do...Asking a question is a characteristic of human beings, as unique to us as a species as is laughing.  Elizabeth then goes on to question what this might reveal about us. She says, ' It shows first of all that we do not know some thing and yet want to know it: we have a desire for this truth...It also means in some significant way that we do have a hunch that something is there to be known...How many questions can we ask in a lifetime? It is without number. No one answer will ultimately satisfy us.

Think of the children you know. Aren't they full of questions? Why? why? why? Though it can be rather annoying at times, it is part of the gift of new life. Certainly, as the child gets older, 'because I say so' is not an answer that will be accepted. So the child's questioning forces us to look more deeply at life and what makes the world the way it is.


Think of yourself. How often each day do you ask questions? Many will be  practical questions like, 'where is this?' or 'what is that' or 'how can I do this?' but sometimes the questions are deeper. 'Why does he or she act that way?' 'Why am I doing this or saying that?' 'What meaning does this all have anyway?' Surely Elizabeth is right that there is no end to our questions and to our questioning.
 

I don't know who took this photo but it says something about the hugeness of the questions we ask.

What is the point of this need to question in our lives? I believe it has something to do with a deep and constant searching for understanding and for meaning. We seek to understand ourselves and the others in our life, we want to know about this world in which we live and the cosmos in which it exists. Ultimately, we want to know what purpose is at work in existence? 

Surely we are seeking in the totality of our questioning that which brings all the pieces of our life together, that which makes us whole, that which is peace and healing. Thomas Merton says it this way: At the center of our being is a point...which is untouched by sin and illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God...*. Can this be the goal of our questions?  
Lent is a special time set aside for the big questions and the big answers. 

*Elizabeth A. Johnson: Consider Jesus, Crossroad Publishing, 1990. 
*Thomas Merton: Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander.