How to breach “a brick wall”

“There is wisdom in not knowing.” 

In January, we read these opening words in an online posting found in our inbox, and thought, “We’ve been let off the hook!” We can sit back, and continue to be comfortable in…to embrace…our vacancy, our half-learning, our charlatanry. 

What the piece reported is true: “There are many things in life that we don’t know…. We can’t possibly know everything.” The writing—it was issued by the DailyOM, an endeavour which sees itself as being a resource on one’s “journey to wellness”—advised that we “should feel no shame in saying, ‘I don’t know’.” Why, “People can actually end up appearing more foolish when they act as if they know something that they don’t know.” 

Oh, wait, we hadn’t been dealt a get-out-of-jail card: “It is a true master who professes ignorance, for only an empty vessel can be filled.” It’s like this: “When we admit that we don’t know something, we can then open ourselves up to the opportunity to learn” [emphases added]. 

In fessing up to our duncery, the jotting warranted, “there is power”: “In doing so, we open ourselves up to the unknown. We can discover what lies beyond our current levels of understanding.” So, we ought go ahead and admit to not knowing, and do it “with a funny face, a shrug, and a comical ‘I don’t know’.” But thereupon take the offensive, and go “in pursuit of…answers.”

Now it is that “answers” are obtained from questions asked. And, as another message that arrived in our inbox in January pointed up, wondering is one of progressive Christianity’s keystones. In one of Progressive Spirit’s Q&A columns, an inquirer asked after our religious community’s commitment “to a path of life-long learning, believing there is more value in questioning than in absolutes.” In his reply, progressive Christianity stalwart the Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers observed, “[T]he horizon is not the end of things, but merely the limit of our sight.” He pictured questioning and lifelong learning as “the model of faith.” 

Earlier in the month, progressivechristianity.org posted the lyrics to a number, penned by one George Stuart, titled “We Can’t Stop Asking Questions”. The song declares, “[W]e search for understanding…finding meaning is demanding…modern thought should prompt reflection.” Here is the last stanza, complete: “Shall we ever limit questions? Stop our probing; asking ‘Why?’? Unafraid of new suggestions, we shall search until we die!”

In that same dispatch, the American site for progressive Christianity included another song, this one by a Sidney Dixon, “Praise the Source of Faith and Learning,” which included these lines: “Praise the source of faith and learning that has sparked and stoked the mind with a passion for discerning…. May our learning curb the error which unthinking faith can breed….” 

Still another message—this one, from The Christian Century, was posted January 30—addressed this same matter. In it, Katherine Schmidt, an associate professor of theology and religious studies at New York’s Molloy University, imagined how “the next well-timed question” might be the very one “to open the door” where you “had previously thought there was a brick wall.” 

If you have wonders or apprehensions, maybe especially about what Schmidt calls “the biggest questions of human experience,” the “questions that get to the heart of the human experience,” one solution is near at hand: Southminster-Steinhauer’s own Library.   

The SSUC Library collection—of more than 700 books, of ideas—explores religion, church, spirituality, theology, faith, doubt, values, beliefs, Jesus, God and gods, and all such things. These are writings to be pored over and pondered, weighed and wondered about. And valued. 

The classics are present and accounted for, everything from The Confessions of St. Augustine to Martin Buber’s I and Thou. There are works written by such luminaries as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Northrop Frye, Abraham Heschel, Albert Schweitzer, Paul Tillich, and Simone Weil. Others will acquaint you with such great church figures as John Wesley and Hildegard of Bingen. There are plays—The Trial of God by Elie Wiesel, and Lucas Hnath’s The Christians. Progressive Christianity pioneers like Jack Spong and Lloyd Geering penned still other of the volumes. Consider Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God, but also Richard Dawkins’ refutation in The God Delusion.

On the shelves you’ll come upon the Iona Abbey Worship Book, Bible atlases, an eco-foods guide, An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, self-help books, including lots on loss and grieving by the likes of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, even Nancy Steeves’ doctoral thesis. There’s fiction, too: challenge yourself and read Nikos Kazantzakis’ controversial The Last Temptation of Christ, and Putting Away Childish Things, the novel that, as one reviewer put it, “flows out of Marcus Borg’s life.” There are books about the Earth Charter, LGBTQ concerns, the Dead Sea Scrolls, fundamentalism, myths and mythology, bullying, preaching, sexism, the labyrinth, mid-life crises, evolution, Christmas, human rights and humanism, feminist theology, Buddha, Islam, justice, the parables, prayer, Christian ethics, Celtic wisdom, parenting, sin, eternal life, shamanism. Whoa, catch your breath.

Discover The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot; read how Jesus became Christian, and also God; see why No Man is an Island; explore The World of Anne Frank; join in The Battle for God, or play Hide and Seek with God, or go along with SSUC’s Clair Woodbury Looking for God; go In Search of Paul; learn how to love nature; spend The Last Week with Jesus; get acquainted with the Middle East; ask, Can We Trust the New Testament?; ask also The Great Questions of Life; meet The Pagan Christ; find faith, peace, the right words, your way home, and your religion. Why, You Can Teach Yourself Philosophy of Religion. And this litany of authors, titles, and topics, only scratches the surface!

Along with handfuls of DVDs and videos, all this is waiting to be browsed and borrowed; what’s not to be circulated are the slim number of reference works. Everything has been ordered and shelved, arranged by author, from A (Abbott, Deborah) to Z (Zuckerman, Andrew). Book-borrowing has been made as easy as can be: you’ll find lists, both by author and title, in a binder atop the first of the two tallest bookcases; as well, these can be accessed on the Library’s webpage (ssucedmonton.com/library), so you can pick and choose what you’ll want right from home. Simply sign out the books using the in-and-out form—it’s in the same binder; later on, please be sure to note on the form the date you return the items you’ll have borrowed, and place them in the basket atop the second of the taller bookcases. It’s pretty much grab and go!

So, please, get going!

Ellen & Ken Fredrick