I have been asking questions my whole life, but two particular childhood moments of inquiry stand out to me. The first happened when I was in second grade. Officer Friendly came to school to talk to us about what to do if an adult “touches you in a way that doesn’t feel right.” The obvious first step was to tell your parents. But as someone whose brain always jumps to what if scenarios and deconstructs to the point of annoyance I immediately began wondering what someone would do if their parent was the perpetrator. It seemed like a genuinely important question and my hand shot up immediately to ask it. I still remember the look on the officer’s face and his grapple for an answer that ended with the suggestion that you talk to a teacher or other trusted adult. That made sense to me so I mentally moved on. It wasn’t until I was a little older that I found out the question triggered a talk with the teacher and had my parents not been more involved in the school/had I not already established myself as an incessant questioner could have also triggered a hotline call.
A few years later I was in large group at an Awanas youth group weekly gathering. We were not raised attending church regularly, but I was lured in by the games followed by Bible passage memorization for fake money to spend on candy and other prizes I never was patient enough to save for. Church and the Bible are heydey for young questioners with little previous exposure. I was always baffled by prayer and what I considered the potential selfishness of these nightly requests of God. I always figured for every bride begging for sun there was a farmer praying for rain. We ended these Awanas nights with large group and I decided to raise my hand and ask a question of the youth pastors. “Is it possible to pray for too much?” I appreciated that they instantly knew I did not mean pray too often but literally ask for too much. I don’t remember his response that day, but I do remember coming back into the same room, boys and girls previously separated for games and passage time now all together to learn as one… he told the group that someone had asked a question the last week that he hadn’t really felt good about answering on the spot and that he had spent his week contemplating and preparing his answer. I don’t remember the nuances of his answer but it was basically no prayer was asking for too much if well-intended. I was too busy being struck by the power of a question and how important I felt as a child for posing it. I felt like asking questions might be my superpower.
Despite how powerful I felt in that moment, over the years I mostly learned to silence most of the questions that parade through my head daily - not completely… I had two different teachers in high school contact my parents with calls or postcards complimenting me on my ability to pose hard questions, but I think I picked up at some point that my questions might annoy those around me or sound like picking an argument when I was just genuinely curious. But believe me - those questions have not stopped torturing me on the regular - keeping me from ever feeling any sense of resolution, any peace from doubt or comfort in conviction.
These two moments keep playing through my head at night this week. I kept wanting to share them with the world (aka the few of you who do me the kindness of reading these waning posts) but I couldn’t figure out why. Then yesterday and today, surrounded by voices and opinions about month 22 of Covid and how we should proceed, I realized why these stories have been tapping on my door. One thing my love of questioning has created in me is an almost disdain for any form of certainty. It can be a troubling way to exist - embracing constant curiosity and cognitive dissonance, but it does bring with it a willingness to listen, learn, and consequently love in ways I have seen a shortage of lately. Everyone has so many opinions as we are all facing so many collective problems requiring patches that impact our interwoven lives in such significant ways. These opinions have also become announcements of who we are and what we believe way outside of viruses and masks and what kids need most creating a space for lots of judgment and assumptions of moral/intellectual superiority. It’s exhausting really - all the yelling and the asserting and the certainty. I feel certain about so little except how committed I am to caring for and about those I am surrounded by on a regular basis.
I think one of the reasons I like to ask questions is because I accept that sometimes conflicting things can be true at the same time, and sometimes truth as we know it can change over time. I know there is satisfaction in being sure, but somewhere outside of it is the chance to come together and learn more than you ever could otherwise. I often think about a PD I went through once where they said we need to stop thinking in terms of right or best and instead in a mindset of tensions we can live with. A lot of the disagreements that are tearing apart communities right now are not because we disagree about facts, but because we disagree about what tensions we can live with. And it makes sense that we would - because we all have different tensions we can live with. I wonder if questions can create a dialogue to help us learn where each person’s tension lies, what life experiences led to those tension preferences, and how we might better coexist in a way that honors someone else’s tension while making room for us to nurture our own.
There is so much to heal from in light of our last 22 months as a country. When I imagine reflecting on this time it saddens me to think that that reflection might dwell on how we grew apart instead of came together. Why? - I like to ask myself. How did we get here? What do we do about it?
“He explained to me with great insistence that every question possessed a power that did not lie in the answer.”
― Elie Wiesel, Night
