When we're exposed to the liveliness of holding everything up to the light of good questions—what I call "sacred questioning"—we discover that redemption is creeping into the way we think, believe, and see the world. This re-deeming (re-valuing) of what we've made of our lives, a redemption that perhaps begins with the insertion of a question mark beside whatever feels final and absolute and beyond questioning, gives our souls a bit of elbow room, a space in which to breathe and imagine again, as if for the first time.
-David Dark (The Sacredness of Questioning Everything)
There is so much that I love in these words. Smaller & Deeper is about "the liveliness of holding everything up to the light of good questions." There is always so much more going on just beneath the surface. When we take the time and space to see and ask a question and embrace the answer, unfiltered and unedited, we start to see what is going on in our hearts. Simple questions suddenly become anything but simple. They can point us to a deeper understanding or draw us to the thing we have been avoiding, only to find, when brought to the light, there is a lesson, joy, and perhaps even freedom in what seemed so scary and untouchable.
"This re-deeming (re-valuing) of what we've made of our lives, a redemption that perhaps begins with the insertion of a question mark beside whatever feels final and absolute and beyond questioning, gives our souls a bit of elbow room, a space in which to breathe and imagine again, as if for the first time."
-David Dark.
Re-deeming, Re-valuing, re-imagining, re-organizing, re-alignment, "re" words are such powerful words to welcome into our vocabulary. Words matter, and there is much grace in the "re" words. My high school English teacher (Mrs. B) insisted we learn Greek and Latin roots; four years of high school vocabulary tests included taking apart words and finding the "roots." Words become more complex and interesting when broken down into their parts or essences. It is a process of seeing with new eyes and hearing with new ears; the parts make up the whole.
"Re" is a Latin prefix that means "again," "again and again," or "go backwards." So, reimagining, reorganizing, and realigning call us to imagine, organize, and align again and again. These are not things we do just once; there is in the very word a call to continually and with intention redeem, revalue, reimagine.
What question mark can you insert into your own life to help you "re-value" what you have made with your life? It is easy, and all too common, to hold our lives up in comparison to everyone else around us.
What would happen if we saw our life, our path, our choices in light of just... our life?
What if we viewed our lives and choices through the lens of grace?
Have we made the next right choice to the best of our ability?
What question can you ask to re-value the beauty, uniqueness, and one-of-a-kindness of your life?
Where can you use questions to give your soul "elbow room and space in which to breathe and imagine again?" Isn't that just what we all long for: elbow room, space, grace, room to breathe, freedom, and permission to listen to our lives, hearts, and souls to hear what they are saying?
"Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent."
― Parker J. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation
Listen to your life, again and again, and again. . . Let your questions enliven and embolden you to live the life you are here to live.
Make a list of the five biggest questions that you have; they can be about your own life, your faith, your community, our nation, anything. Sometimes just writing down the questions helps us to see them with new eyes.
I try to notice words or phrases that stand out to me in my reading and listening. There is a spiritual practice called Florliledgium that collects short, interesting pieces or words that “sparkle” up and puts them together. This is kind of like that. Watching for things that sparkle. Gathering them and seeing how they work together and what message, mantra, or new idea might arise.
A Practice:
Read slowly.
Notice if a word or phrase stands out to you.
How do the words make you feel?
Is there an invitation?
(The following quotes are all from David Dark in his book, The Sacredness of Questioning Everything: Is Your God Big Enough to Be Questioned?)
“I want very badly to challenge the ease with which we succumb to the false divide of labels, that moment in which our empathy gives out and we refuse to respond openhandedly or even curiously to see people with whom we differ. As I see it, to refuse the possibility of finding another person interesting, complex and as complicated as oneself is a form of violence. At bottom, this is a refusal of nuance, and I wish to posit that nuance is sacred. To call it sacred is to value it so highly that we find it fitting to somehow set it apart as something to which we're forever committed. Nuance refuses to envision others degradingly, denying them the content of their own experience, and talks us down tenderly from the false ledges we've put ourselves on. When we take it on as a sacred obligation, nuance also delivers us out of the deadly habit of cutting people out of our own imaginations. This opens us up to the possibility of at least occasionally finding one another beautiful, the possibility of communion. [...] It could be that there's no communion without [nuance].”
― David Dark, The Sacredness of Questioning Everything: Is Your God Big Enough to Be Questioned?
Show me a transcript of the words you’ve spoken, typed, or texted in the course of a day, an account of your doings, and a record of your transactions, and I’ll show you your religion.
― David Dark, The Sacredness of Questioning Everything: Is Your God Big Enough to Be Questioned?
Fresh questions and new acts of imagination are our primary means to encounter love and liveliness, to discover integrity and authenticity. Without them, we’re pretty well done for. We have to exercise and exorcise our imagination with questions.
― David Dark, The Sacredness of Questioning Everything: Is Your God Big Enough to Be Questioned?
And being capable of discerning what we have in common with the people who challenge our sense of decorum will involve silencing the tape, the inner monologue, that tells us why we’re right and others are wrong, even as we pretend to listen by nodding knowingly. Our momentarily stilled tongues might genuinely signify the reception of another person’s witness. And if they do, it could be that God’s kingdom, where two or more are gathered in this way, is already present. “In the end,” Thomas Merton assures us, “it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.”
― David Dark, The Sacredness of Questioning Everything: Is Your God Big Enough to Be Questioned?
It’s as if millions of people never enter our imaginations—not even as casualties. They don’t enter the gates of our chosen media. We need to question ourselves. What content do I privilege? How many different kinds of people do I encounter? What am I taking in? To whom do I go to figure out what’s going on?
These days, listening a little harder, looking with a wider-angle lens, and simply being slower to push the “I’m offended!” button might be revolutionary actions.
― David Dark, The Sacredness of Questioning Everything: Is Your God Big Enough to Be Questioned?
Nice....