Life is about learning to live in the questions. This thought began working its way through my mind many years ago. I was barely twenty and I was starting to be open to a life lived not in securing answers but in developing a tolerance for ambiguity. In my mind’s eye, I see myself sitting in my home church, listening to the sermon, and allowing my thoughts to go deeper. I remember writing in the margin on my Bible this idea of living in the questions. The great thing and maybe the worst thing about memories is that they are rarely accurate. And in fact, the studies have shown that the more you remember something the less accurate it becomes. With each remembrance our minds add new details to help it make more sense and be more useful. I used to think that dreams were like a video camera, clearly capturing events like a documentary. I know now that our memories are as biased as we are.
I wanted to find all my old Bibles because I did not remember which one contained this note in the margin. So, my husband I climbed the rickety pulldown stairs that lead to our attic over the garage in search of my old Bibles. This is a huge open space filled with a lifetime of memories and mementos as well as things we just don’t have anywhere else to store. In the attic I have a big box that is full of old books. Books that my bookcases in the house will not hold. Most of these books are devotionals that I have used over the years to guide my quiet time. There are other books too, books that at one time were helpful or meaningful but no longer reflect my faith experience. Digging through the box that day was like traveling back in time. As I read each of the book titles, held them in my hands, and turned them over, it was like reconnecting with old friends. Books are markers for life. They provide a snapshot of what was capturing my interests and where I was in my faith journey.
I have always been a reader. I struggled in elementary school in reading. My teachers used various strategies to help me increase my fluency and comprehension. I was unfortunately lumped in with the “low” readers and was pulled out of class for targeted help. When the reading teacher came to my classroom to take us out, me and 5 or 6 of my classmates, it was hard not to feel labeled. It was as if I had a big sign on my back that said STUPID. All my friends got to stay in the classroom, and I alone left with the kids that everyone knew were not very smart as she shuttled us off to our “special” class. That’s why I think it is amazing that I love to read as much as I do. It’s likely today that I would have been diagnosed with some disability but in 70’s I just internalized it as being dumb. I am glad that it didn’t keep me from reading every night before bed. It often took me a long time to get through a book, but I kept reading. My mother took us to the library weekly. Reading was very normal in my home growing up. My mother was always reading a book, my father read at night before bed and my younger brother was a voracious reader. I am very thankful for my love of reading. For the places books have taken me and the challenges they have been to my narrow world view, growing up in a small farming community in rural southern Ohio. Anna Quindlen says it best, “Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.”
In enjoyed that day being up in the attic digging through my box of books. After a while, having found two of my Bibles, I made my way down the rickety ladder and carried them into the house where I sat and went through each of them page by page. Nothing. In my mind’s eye I see my small barely legible print “life is about learning to live in the questions.” I was so disappointed. I am still looking for one more Bible. My NIV Study Bible I had in college. When I find that Bible, I hope to find this quote. I keep hoping the memory of writing in the margin that day in my home church isn’t just something my mind has conjured up. And maybe it doesn’t even matter anymore. Maybe the fact that I am thinking about it today is all that really matters. This idea that has been my traveling companion through the last 30 plus years. The notion that learning to live in the questions reflects more of my journey now than it did when I wrote it all those years ago. That focusing solely on the answers is so much less important than the questions themselves. What if the answers are the “seeing in the mirror dimly” and the questions themselves are how we see clearly “face to face” as Paul talks about in I Corinthians 13:12?
I hope I find where I wrote this idea about the living in the questions all those years ago, but if I never do it will be ok. And really, do I need the certainty that I wrote it? No, I guess not.