38/50: Following the Beautiful Question
I’m a little afraid I may have posted this song already but it’s in the top 3 favorite songs of my life so perhaps it deserves more than one posting and this version from a session with a Harlem gospel choir is what I want heaven to be like.
“...there is a great choice that awaits us every day: whether we go around carving holes in others because we have been so painfully carved ourselves, or whether we let spirit play its song through our tender experience, enabling us to listen, as well, to the miraculous music coming through others””
Something we often miss when reading Scripture is looking at the development of a person. Authors mature and change over time, including biblical writers. One gift of removing the burden of inerrancy from Scripture is that you get to watch how thoughts develop rather than holding them all with equal weight. A brilliant exemplar of this is the Apostle Paul, which has been explored by Richard Rohr and Marcus Borg.
As Paul grows in faith and maturity, into what Rohr calls the “second half of life,” he develops a tremendous confidence in the power of Christ within us. Here’s one of my favorite texts: “Now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine…” (Ephesians 3:20) Notice the work isn’t done to us or for us or even through us but within us.
When Paul talks about Jesus in his later letters, he sees the revelation of Christ as the unfolding of a mystery: “…the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Colossians 1:26-27). Paul says that what receive from Christ is a mystery: Christ is in us. There’s that “in” language again, marking Paul as a mystic who is experiencing God within.
That’s an awful lot of mystery and mysticism mentioned by the biblical writer who is most associated with systematic theology!
The Mystery that is God does its work within us. When I think of the future, I often think about what God is going to do in spite of us, but Paul says we are a part of that future as we allow God’s power to do its work within us.
What does it take to participate in that kind of future?
It requires us to be vulnerable enough to ask questions. Mystery cannot be experienced anywhere that our knowing is surrounded by high walls or where we have slouched into easy answers. The discipline of mystery is re-learning the childhood practice of asking beautiful questions.
One of my teachers is the poet David Whyte who teaches the power of the “beautiful question.” David isn’t the only one to believe a question can be more powerful than an answer. Jesus was always quick to respond with a beautiful question when he was faced with a polarizing question. A beautiful question will always bring us into contact with our soul and connect us to mystery. “Our ability to ask really beautiful questions depends on our relationship to the unknown,” says David Whyte. Often our search for answers keeps us on the fringes of mystery while questions can bring us to the heart of it. God came to Ancient Israel in a cloud, a pillar of fire and behind a thick curtain. The paradox seems to be that in the hiddenness of God we find God, and that our questions can lead us into the heart of God’s love.