Dear Friends,
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
This is a standard proclamation that Christians around the world proclaim on Easter. It is a Christian faith statement that even though there is enough fear and chaos to go around for all of us in our troubled world, God will ultimately have the last say. As Richard Rohr wrote in his book The Universal Christ, “Everything will be all right in the end. If it’s not all right, it is not yet the end.”
So what does risen life look like while we are still on this earth? I believe a spiritual journey is becoming yourself. Although the journey of human becoming is lifelong, it is not simply a result of the passage of time. Time is necessary but not sufficient. It requires an intention of going to a deeper place. It takes a passionate desire to become who God created you to be and to heed God’s call to live out God’s vision for your life. And that’s a very scary thought for most of us. But it’s the only answer to liberation and freedom from our perpetual state of being in anxiety and misery of living impostor lives.
There is a story that David Whyte, an Irish poet, tells that after his teenage daughter slams her bedroom door during a disagreement between them, he says: “I was just about to say that last, deeply satisfying unhelpful thing. But I caught myself and said, ‘David, this isn’t a real conversation. How do you make this a real conversation?’ ”
So he went and made them both a cup of tea and set them on a tray with cookies, then knocked on the door again and asked: “Charlotte, tell me one thing you’d like me to stop doing as a father. And tell me one thing you’d like me to do more of.” An invitation was made. Conversation shifted. Connection was restored. The ability to ask beautiful questions, often in very unbeautiful moments, is one of the great acts of courage and moments of grace.
So, what makes a question beautiful? According to David Whyte, a beautiful question is a gamechanger; a question that calls you to take notice. These are questions that can upend your beliefs, probe dormant parts of your thinking, and open up the possibility of a new way of being that will lead to a new life. It opens a door to articulate your deepest longings and truths, bringing you to a frontier where deeper intimacy is possible with yourself, with the other, and the world.
You realize these conversations are leading you in directions that you wouldn’t even have considered before. And to your surprise, if you are true to asking these beautiful questions, you end up living the life you didn’t imagine.
John
