Living into the Questions

Jason Goroncy recently featured this commentary from Mike Higton in his very good introduction to Rowan Williams’ theology – Difficult Gospel: The Theology of Rowan Williams (pub. 2004 / p.69). 

The chapter is titled: “Cloud of Witnesses” and begins with this scene-setting paragraph: 

“The Gospel involves us in processes of learning. In the first place, the Gospel is not a message we can tell ourselves – it is not the sort of message that can be derived from a little introspection or analysis: we need to hear it, to be won into it – to be taught it. And its implications are not immediately and totally transparent: we need time and we need help if we are to learn to walk in it’s light…” 

This sets the scene for the quote Jason draws attention to: 

“…If the reality which the Church helps us to explore – the reality which it teaches – is that ‘ceaseless movement towards the Father’, then we need to be cautious about how we express the nature of the Church’s teaching. It is not going to be simply the doling out of well-understood truth – a case of those who have reached and understood the truth handing out that truth to others. Rather the Church will teach by inviting others to join with it in learning, and by pointing them to the sources from which it itself is slowly learning … 

…Rather than thinking of the Church as the bearer of answers, it might be better to think about the Church as the bearer of a question – the bearer of the question which the Gospel poses; we might say with Williams that the Church is ‘[t]hat which transmits God’s question from generation to generation’. The Church teaches by pointing away from itself to the transforming, upsetting impact of Jesus – pointing not so much to a stable, achieved religious system as to a disruption which can bring all systems of religious practice and knowledge face to face with a reality that cannot be exhausted by any system. The Church’s paradoxical task is to preserve this questioning – to find concrete forms of life, stable practices, and a learnable language that will keep alive the possibility of our hearing this disruption, and which will allow it to be felt deeper and far wider than the circle of its original impact’

- Difficult Gospel by Mike Higton, pp. 69. 

Thanks Jason.

My natural disposition it to live with the questions, unanswered questions, and so I’ve always found the wisdom in this quote from poet Rainer Maria Rilke encouraging. Wisdom isn't easily gained; well certainly its not gained without learning to live with oftentimes unanswerable questions. Wisdom takes time. Change, growth, and discipleship takes time: 

“…I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer…” 

It’s taken from his wonderful little book, Letters to a Young Poet, and I think it sits well with a lot of the sentiment expressed in Higton’s reflections on Williams’ theology, as articulated above. There’s something important and needful about sitting with the questions, and of “living your way slowly into the answers…”

Comments

[Jason Goroncy]

You're welcome, mate.