The Importance of Questions

A few months back I was sitting at a picnic table with a couple of friends of the congregation. One friend had been to a training, but she wasn’t sure she was going back- she had asked a question and been told the answer was “too complicated for her to understand” Ugh. Another friend told the story of a time she asked her boss a question about her job, and was called a trouble maker. All of us had been told at one time or another that “we ask too many questions.”

Perhaps this has happened to you? I know some of you have told me it happened to you in Sunday school -- and you told me that in fact you were here in a UU church today because you asked a question that was shut down somewhere along the way.

So I just wanted to say; Unitarian Universalism is a place where your questions are welcome. Where questions are important.

Where do ducks sleep? What makes some clouds look flat on the bottom? Why is it so hard to see the crescent moon where I live? What is gender, really? Every research project, every scientific discovery, starts with a question that someone decided was worth the investment of time, resources and curiosity. 

Questions help us fix things that are broken- Why is my car making that rattly noise? Does trickle-down economics really work? Do the musicians you listen to on Spotify get any money for their work? What can we do about all the plastic in the ocean? How does human activity impact climate change? Where can people who are unhoused go on freezing cold days?

One of our 7 guiding principles is the “free and responsible search for meaning” and this has been part of who we are from the very beginning.

When the printing press was invented, folks who had never read the bible were able to read it themselves for the first time. Servetus, a physician who discovered pulmonary respiration – the way air moves through our lungs -- wanted to understand where the idea of the trinity came from, and found it didn’t come from the bible! He got in big trouble for that question- We UUs have been getting in trouble for our questions for a long time.

Back at the picnic table, we wondered why a presenter might have shut down my friend’s question. Most likely they didn’t know the answer or weren’t sure how to explain it. I shared a story from when I was in high school -- our chemistry teacher was teaching us about fire, and I wanted to understand “what IS fire.” He was very cross with me and I didn’t get the answer I was searching for. I learned much later in life that fire is a PROCESS, and moreover, that there are things we just don’t know.

You can understand why a frazzled high school chemistry teacher in an unruly class might be cross about a question he didn’t have the bandwidth to answer, but my friends and I had all felt the impact of having a question shot down by someone in authority- having our curiosity nipped in the bud. Those memories stay with you.

We talked about how hard it is, especially when you are new in your job -- as a teacher, a presenter, a minister -- to say “I don’t know” when that’s the case. What a relief it is to realize you can simply say “I don’t know” - it opens the door for other folks to figure it out together. This was the guidance when I was parenting a child in the “why” phase of life -- “let’s go look that up together”.

I’m grateful to have been raised UU, where questions were appreciated, and mostly welcomed. I was, of course, the child who asked a million questions, and even my mom, who loves a good question herself, would occasionally have to say “that’s enough questions for today, I’m tired” I asked so many questions in yoga class that the teacher would sometimes have to say, “let’s talk about that after class.” Not that it was wrong to ask the question, just that there were other people in the class who needed the teacher’s attention too.

The friend who asked her boss a question- she noticed that sometimes when we ask questions, it feels like a threat to authority, especially questions like “why do we do it this way?” Those who fear such questions are not wrong; a good question, a really good question, can be destabilizing, it might lead to change.  

When I was about to head off on my sabbatical last year, I wondered what resources the UUA had to help us navigate the time. There wasn’t much on the website, so I emailed the head of the department to ask “Who is working on sabbaticals?” I asked the same question at the minister’s association. Crickets. I asked and asked that question, until one of those people I had asked, heard someone else asking the same question, and set up a meeting with folks from both organizations. We confirmed that there was no one else who was in charge, and we agreed that together we would make a space to resource sabbaticals. A new task force emerged with all kinds of great new questions … what is a sabbatical really? And if sabbaticals are important, what are we going to do about community and interim ministers who don’t get sabbaticals? The Task force is now revising the handbook and has other projects in the works. A simple question leading to real change.

But a question, like any tool, is something we must learn to use with skill.

Unitarians have sometimes used the same wonderful skeptical questioning that helped us figure out that the earth rotates around the sun, and trickle down economics does not work, and applied that same skepticism to the life of the spirit and the heart. Do you love me? Do you really love me? Prove it! Did you really have that life -changing numinous experience, or was it just endorphins at the end of a hike and the thin air at the top of the hill? Sometimes UUs have mis-used their right to ask questions in a way that disrupts community, harms relationships, “just asking questions” when in truth they already believe they know the right answer.

That’s why we say a free and “responsible” search for meaning. Because questions are powerful, we must use that power responsibly. I’m proud that in our congregations we treat each other’s beliefs with great care and respect. When a friend tells us about the visit from a cardinal to her bird feeder, that felt like a visit from her beloved who had died, we just enjoy that good feeling with her, that she had a meaningful experience. In spiritual direction we try to ask questions that help people know their own hearts, know their own spirits “What did you feel? What did you notice? What is your desire?” We’ve noticed that some questions shut people down, or limit their freedom, and other questions help them follow their own inner truth more closely.

Some questions poke us in tender places. I’m sure you’ve experienced a question that was unkind, or at least clumsy. I remember standing in a long line for a potluck many years ago when someone asked “are you going to have any more children?” This was a tender and active question in my own family, ouch. I don’t remember what I answered, but I remember asking “how about you guys, are you going to have children?” “That’s personal!” She returned. Yes. When we ask questions about someone else’s life, their heart, their body, their tender places, our questions can be like a weapon that cuts down, or like an open hand that invites. We can offer our questions with great respect and care, or sometimes just ponder them quietly in our own hearts. It can be good when getting ready to ask a question, to consider “Who or what does this question serve?”

I think, if you ask a question that makes someone mad, or nervous, it might be because you’ve found a really good question. The reason that question felt tender to me, was because that was a powerful, alive question for me and my family at that moment. But that was a question for me to explore with my therapist and my partner, not an acquaintance in a potluck line.

Questions have an important part in my spiritual life. I often bring questions into my spiritual practice. Perhaps I start out with a general feeling of things being unsettled. It might take a while to find the right question, some of the ones I’ve been wrestling with lately are: Who am I now? How can I, an adult who grew up in a humanist home, learn to pray authentically? Do I have something more to contribute in this next chapter of my life? Why would a loving God allow suffering? I know I’ve found the right question because it has a deep, clear resonance. If it doesn’t ring like a bell, if it sounds a bit muffled, I keep refining it, I keep molding it like a piece of clay, until I find a question that gets to the heart of things. I might write it in my journal, and I find that sometimes just getting the right question means I’m in the home stretch for understanding what I most desire to know.

Some questions we ask ourselves can be challenging, destabilizing. In recent years the leaders of our church in Athens were tired after years of faithfully steering us through the challenges of Covid, and we wondered- does what we do here matter? And once you’ve asked a question like that, really wondering, really looking for a true answer, you have to be open to the possibility that it doesn’t, that maybe it would be enough for there to be churches in neighboring towns, and communities of UUs online. Does it matter that we have a space here; do we offer something different than a coffee shop, a library, or one of the many other churches in the Valley? And when we asked that question, people told us how this place mattered. New members told us they couldn’t believe a church would say they were welcome just as they are. It matters that we create a caring community together, when we are lonely, when we are sad, when we are worried. And when we saw the standing room only crowd at Transgender Day of Remembrance and Resilience that Sunday of 2024 eyes shining with tears, hearts full, people gathered in community for something important, something that mattered, we had our answer.

Our Cortland congregation asked a hard question about their beautiful historic building- it is a lot for a small band of dedicated volunteers to maintain. Was it time to let go of that beloved building and find a new place to meet? You could feel the tender power of that question in the room when it was asked. We sat with that question for over a year, until we were all clear that the old cobblestone church was a unique sacred space, important to the history of Cortland and to each of us, and we were ready to fight to save it. We also asked “does this space have a calling?” And since that time, our building with the hard work of our volunteers, has been a home to all kinds of wonderful gatherings, from farm workers, to coffee houses, to the masked activity collective, to our Community Meals. “Yes”, we learned. The building does matter, and it does have a calling.

Questions have power, so I invite you to nurture those Questions that come out of your own curiosity, your longing to know things more deeply, your desire to discern what is at the heart of things. Questions have power, so I invite you to use them responsibly, with respect and open mindedness, at the service of what is most precious. Questions have power, and your questions are welcome here.

Peace

We talk about peace today, on Mother’s day, because the first Mother’s Day Observance was the brainchild of Unitarian activist Julia Ward Howe.[i] Mother of 5 children, poet, and activist on many topics from safe hygiene for soldiers in the Civil war, to women’s suffrage and the right of women to hold public office, to the abolition of slavery. Howe also longed for peace. In 1872 “after the Franco-Prussian War, Howe began to think of a global appeal to women. “While the war was still in progress,” she wrote, she keenly felt the “cruel and unnecessary character of the contest.” She believed, … that it could have been settled without bloodshed. And, she wondered, “Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone bear and know the cost?”[ii]”

So today, in honor of Mother’s Day, at a time when our own country has entered yet another war, we talk about peace.

In the Buddhist Sutra, the Dhammapada, verse 5, The Buddha says “Hatred never ends with hatred. By love alone does it end. This is an ancient truth”

Buddhist teacher Gil Fronsdal says “the Buddha first spoke this poem to his own quarreling disciples. His monastic community had fractured over a minor rule violation. The sangha, meant to embody peace and harmony, had become a verbal battleground offering his poem of peace”… “Hatred never ends with hatred. By love alone does it end. This is an ancient truth”

This teaching of the Buddha has inspired many brave folks over the years to respond to violence with peace. It inspired the famous words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hatred multiplies hate, violence multiples violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.” [iii]

Fronsdal says of King: “This is not naïve optimism, It’s hard-won wisdom. Love, as the Buddha teaches it, is not sentimental or weak. Those who love wisely see clearly by knowing the full humanity of others, including both good and bad. Love heals division by viewing others as kin. any conflicts dissolve in the presence of such love. Those that don’t are transformed from battles to be won into problems to be resolved. Without love, friends, and understanding, divisions persist as seedbeds for future conflict. But with love, not only can hate end – the very ground from which it springs disappears.”

No, King was not naïve. He saw the hatred of those ranged against him, he spent time in the jails. He fought alongside thousands of others for many hard years for the rights that eventually were won (and some overturned last week)

He rigorously lived out this ideal of a non-violent resistance, believing that “"Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows." He vigorously opposed the war in Vietnam, the cost of human life, the cost of destruction of a country, the material costs that could have been put towards feeding, housing, educating the most vulnerable among us.[iv]

"It is not enough” he said “ to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it."

I’ve spoken before about the Buddhist teacher, monk, activist Thich Nhat Hanh, who saw horrific things in his home country of Vietnam during the war, It was no “naïve optimism” with which he taught peace all the rest of his life. Having seen war, he believed that teaching peace was critically important. He believed that it would take brave people grounded firmly in their dedication to peace, who would practice peace every day. Being peaceful is not always as easy as it seems. I know that though I am committed to peace, I make mistakes, I get angry or impatient, or someone pushes my buttons and I say something I regret. But I do find that with practice, with intention, I can embody peace a bit more each time.

Perhaps the hardest time to practice peace is when someone confronts us with anger, or when someone is hurtful to us. Both Martin Luther king and Thich Nhat Hanh are beautiful examples of people who practiced living peace even when faced with hatred, violence and division. They did this because they wanted to be part of changing the pattern. There is a story about the monk arriving on stage to speak about peace, and being met with angry hurtful remarks. Witnesses say he held his composure, and peaceful presence, though after leaving the stage, faltered with the fatigue of the effort that had cost him.

The monk could have met anger with anger, would certainly have been justified to do so, but who knows how a harsh response might have rippled out into the minds and bodies of those who first spoke harshly to him, and others present in the audience. [Gil Fronsdal writes] “divisions persist as seedbeds for future conflict. But with love, not only can hate end – the very ground from which it springs disappears”

Yesterday at the church spirituality retreat, I found myself standing under a grove of old conifer trees, many stories tall. The rain was falling in big steady drops, but as soon as I entered the grove, the drops were slowed by the canopies of the trees. The giant trees were, with their steady presence, changing and softening the pattern of the rain. There was a sudden quiet there, and on either side of the path by my feet were these stunning patches of glowing green moss that looked soft enough to sleep on. I noticed all the delicate new life emerging, that spring green that is the color of trees just leafing out, of new life and life renewed. Peace. I considered how long such a place would have to be undisturbed for this richness to be possible. How many hundred years had those trees been left to grow in peace? How many years of fallen conifer needles, and leaf litter to accumulate into that springy rich ground cover? how long for the tiny gentle moss to grow to cover it? Peace makes space where beings can grow to old age, and so provide a stable reliable shelter to the little ones who grow at their feet.

One of the basic human archetypes is the gentle, loving caregiver, often called mother. We know that people of every gender can embody that kind of peaceful nurturing presence. I believe this archetype lives within each of us, even if we didn’t experience it in our own upbringing. So I invite us to imagine this morning summoning up that archetype in yourself.

Imagine being present with someone who needs a gentle, caring space- perhaps you have felt this watching a child of any species, a grandchild, a puppy, a nest of chicks by your house, or perhaps sitting by the bed of a friend who is weak with illness. When I call up that inner nurturer, my heart longs to make a peaceful space for them.

Living beings need peaceful spaces: 

Consider the songbird scoping a site for their nest, how they will fly off and abandon the whole enterprise if their peace is disturbed

Think of the toddler first learning to stand, how precarious their wobbling is as they make the developmental journey onto 2 feet.

Consider a child, or one of any age who is shy to speak, taking the risk to express themselves,

Consider a time when you or a loved one were sick, the kind of space that lends itself to healing

Consider after a long journey, or a challenging experience, that sense of finally coming home to a place where you can rest, where you can restore, where you can integrate what you have experienced.

Consider a construction site, how long it takes for the disturbed ground to begin to heal, for plants to return and in their season to grow and bloom

Consider the delicate act of pollination as a buzzy bee finds flower after flower in a dance that allows life to continue.

Living beings need peaceful spaces - they are critical for growing, for rest and renewal, for healing, for integrating our experiences, for blossoming and thriving life.

A peaceful space is not one without conflict. If you have ever spent time with a 2 year old, you know that their growth requires them to say no to everything. Their healthy individuated flourishing that will shape who they are as a grown up depends on some nurturing caregiver receiving that sometimes angry, frustrated NO with compassion and good boundaries.

One of the hardest jobs of parents is to set boundaries in a loving way- for safety and for growth. To set boundaries not with threats of violence, but with clarity and patience. Any parent will tell you that at times this is impossibly hard, but we practice- we try, we miss the mark, we try again.

One of the things I love about my congregations is that sometimes I say the wrong thing, and you are so gentle and considerate when you say “Darcey, I think you forgot the hymn, or the name of a longtime member I’ve worked with for years”

I love that people can say in a congregational meeting “I have a different opinion about that” and we are genuinely ready to hear ideas different from our own with an open mind.

We are not perfect, but I see all of us working hard to make this a beloved community where learning and growing, resting and renewing, healing and caring are possible here.

As Thich Nhat Hanh wrote in his book Being Peace

"If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can blossom like a flower, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace."

I think this was the power that brought so many people out to see the monk's walk for peace -- people around the world just wanting to be near ,to witness people living peace in this time of conflict and war. People are hungry for peaceful spaces, and it is a worthy ideal that we could create little pockets of peace for each other, and for our community.

Let us practice peace together, for the benefit of all life.

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[i] https://www.uudb.org/howe-julia-ward/

[ii] https://nationalwomenshistoryalliance.org/resources/commemorations/history-of-mothers-day/

[iii] From King’s 1963 book "Strength to Love,"

[iv] https://web.mit.edu/21h.102/www/Primary%20source%20collections/Vietnam/MLK,%20Beyond%20Vietnam.htm