Any Questions?

Quote du jour

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions." ~ Naguib Mahfouz

Last week I wrote about THE question. This week I wanted to write more about the MANY questions (Of course last week, my big question was - WHY, oh WHY did my old-enough-to-know-better son take the dog out to visit local skunks at two in the morning - with predictable results. The only answer I could come up with was to induce me to make the dog a peroxide blonde. James, my son, DOES live in LA were dogs visit hair stylists weekly. . . For those of you who have never needed to know this - the de-skunking potion involves hydrogen peroxide, baking soda and dish detergent.)

Much of what we do in a Unitarian Universalist church is in service to seeking our own truth and meaning as individuals. Sermons are not holy writ. Nor are newsletter columns and . . . ahem. .. blogs; they are simply a set of questions, ideas and opinions about answers. The questions and answers your church staff come up with are not necessarily the questions and answers YOU come up with and the questions and answers teachers come up with aren't necessarily the questions and answers our children come up with. We are not here to tell others what truth with a capital T is, but rather to hold open the questions and offer our own personal response.

In our faith tradition we ask questions, and we frequently ask questions that have no easy answer or perhaps no answer at all. That doesn't let us off the hook for trying though.

As guides and mentors to our young people, we have a responsibility to hold space for questions and to hold space for uncertainty about answers. Years ago, I was reminded that one of the greatest gifts a teacher can give is the statement "I don't KNOW, this is what I BELIEVE". What I often observe in our liberal world is that adults so fear brainwashing kids that they avoid sharing the answers of their own heart and mind. We aren't charged with telling children what to think, but we are charged with telling children what we believe.

Of course, how we tell them is part of the message. In this political season, I've been telling lots of people what I believe, hoping that it will inspire them to THINK and draw similar conclusions. From the glazed looks I've been getting in southern New Hampshire, I'm not sure how well that's working. I've witnessed the same glazed looks on the faces of kids in the many churches I've served.

So how about this, why don't we each ask ourselves the question "What do I BELIEVE really matters?" And when we discover what things really matter, we can live those things and speak those things and work for those things, and perhaps that will teach our children best of all.

see you in church!