Questioning from Love

 

Jan. 7 

It's the first snow of the season, and at 6 AM, as I am writing this, the snow is still falling.

The French clock, gears engaged, is ticking in the background.

I am here, alone, in the morning, engaged with my body, my sensation, and my mortality. 

The emotional and intellectual parts are quiet now; most of presence is concentrated in the body, where it always begins and where it ought to be seated firmly in order for the other parts to function well. Because this has been a normal condition for me for many years I take it, perhaps, far too much for granted and so I haven't been pausing in the morning in this way on a regular basis for some time. But it’s ever interesting to come back to it, because it forms a more focused reminder of what it means to inhabit a body, to breathe, to be with my self in a deeper and more intimate way. 

It is, in a certain sense, a guilty pleasure to indulge in the simplicity of these facts. Perhaps it is best I leave it for periods of time, else I would grow too fond of it, and that won't do. In the meantime, I confront the inexpressible beauty of the fact that I have no idea of what I will write at this moment. It will simply arrive; I will simply participate.

It does come down to the facts. I mentioned yesterday that a greater interest develops in living within the facts and the truth of my own limitations. There’s a difference between my limitations and my potential. Potential exceeds, in some sense, the limitation of every moment, because potential is a gift of grace that descends via the arrival of a higher energy that the body is able to receive under the right conditions. 

Potential is never realized by me; it belongs to itself. It is a universal cosmological phenomenon caused by the concentration of elements and energy. Every living creature — and every part of creation — is capable of fulfilling potential as it is bestowed by the Creator. This is part of a mystery rarely accessible to the ordinary mind. In some senses it almost doesn't do to think about it; thinking cannot properly honor it or do justice to it. This is the territory of the unspoken and the unknown.

This unspoken and unknown quality enters the world of my limitations, when it does, without reservations. I will create forms to embody it, because this is part of my duty as a living creature. Yet I will remember as I do that its essential quality remains beyond the grasp of any form. I'll remember this not with my thinking mind, or the way I feel about it, or even my sensation itself, but with a blend of all three, an organic embodiment of a question. 

Here I am.

What does this mean?

What is the truth of this moment?

As S. said the other night, “I make some kind of effort. I get a result… Then what?”

It is the "then what?” that matters here.

A thought emerged in me yesterday — of all places, during my weekly therapy session, but why not? It’s as sacred as every other moment — and stated itself roughly as follows: 

It is our duty to question things as an act of love, rather than questioning from anguish or through the destructive forces of doubt. 

I think human beings have forgotten to question as an act of love. Questions oft come out as violent things, opposed to others, selfishly demanding that the answers pertain only to ourselves. This is the opposite of a question that emerges from love, and how it ought to manifest. I read a brief article recently that pointed out how frequently Jesus Christ answered the questions of others with more questions. He was a great adept at the art of questioning, and frequently framed His call to a sincere and unyielding presence towards life in the form of questions. 

Who are we? 

Where are we? 

What are we doing?

This questioning from love is a different kind of questioning than what human beings are generally used to. This is why it was so unfamiliar; and why it has endured in the face of permutations, perversions, and persecutions for 2000 years and more. To question from love is the most essential act a human being can undertake; to question from real love, not the love that we make for ourselves, that is of ourselves, for ourselves, and about ourselves—but to question on behalf of that greater love that can descend into our souls and fill us with a longing for brotherhood and sisterhood and care for one another. 

That unique and sacred love which we do not generate within ourselves, but that is given as the gift of creation to all those creatures, molecular, organic, and energetic, which receive it.

So it’s useful, this understanding that we ought to question from love first and always. It’s possible, through this action, to discover for what real love is, because the action itself lives very close to the nature of love, its essential nature, what it really is, as opposed to the twisted forms we hammer it into on the anvils of our ego.

Well, my goodness, this is quite a loquacious result for what appeared to be such a little thought when it first came. I suppose it contains much greater depths in its nature then I realized when I had it; so it must not be from myself, and it must please God that it has manifested.

These are my thoughts for this morning. May many blessings descend upon you.

with warm regards,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola magazine.