They say to "write what you know."
...whoever they are.
First of all, don't tell me what to do. Second of all... What if I don't know what I know? What if I think a lot of things and hope a lot of things, but what I know changes all the time?
"I never tell a story until I've lived through the lesson of it," I heard some writing teacher say somewhere sometime. So help me, I can't remember who she was; I just remember being annoyed. "Always write with hindsight," she commanded like it was set in holy stone. "Always write from the answers."
Again with the telling me what to do.
I mean -- I get it, theoretically. There's sense in writing what you've experienced rather than appropriating someone else's story. There's sense in waiting for clarity before bringing the details of your life's lessons forward. But this idea of only writing from the answers?
What if you have more questions than answers? What if you've tried the answers and a certainty-based way of living and ultimately found it too limiting and unsustainable for growth? What if you're just more curious by nature, more inquisitive than first, easy answers can satisfy?
Like my niece, Kaisa, who at hardly three years old would ask to go on walks to find God. "I fink God is shy," she had deduced. "He never lets me see her."
(Pronouns are hard for toddlers.
...Or maybe not so much.)
"Well, I think I see God in this flower," we'd say with all the delight that persuades children. "And also in how the wind moves the tree branches, and in how Mommy and Daddy and Aunties love you."
She'd peer in the flower. She'd watch the trees. She'd observe our eyes like she was trying to remember what God's own eyes looked like.
And she'd remain unconvinced.
So we'd walk on, still searching for God (but checking every flower, just in case).
What if you're like that?
Like my cousin, who was told she "thinks too much" when arguing her parents on some theological issue. It wasn't even a real argument, per se, but an impassioned imploration to look beyond the narrow confines of quickly-accepted stances, to actually explore the ground we land on instead of just reading the map and calling it good. "Just because we believe this is true doesn't mean we're seeing all the details," was the heart of the argument. "If we don't notice the details, maybe we aren't actually seeing the true picture, either."
Pesky details, always making or breaking the quality of an image, never allowing you to view an image the same way after having been noticed, insisting, as they do, that you look closer and longer and deeper and wider and bigger and smaller and sharper and softer.
Maybe that is "thinking too much."
But why else would we have the ability?
Like the time I got called into a pastor's office to be asked to lay-off the thinking for a bit. He said it like he was kidding -- but why call a meeting to joke around?
"Didn't God give us minds to be used for thought?" I pressed.
He laughed, "Well, yes. But maybe you don't need to think so loudly. People are coming to me with a lot of questions about things you say, and I just don't have answers for them."
"Do you need answers for them?"
"Well, we don't want them worrying that their answers aren't already true."
"But if their answers are already true, wouldn't you, then, have answers for them? Shouldn't we be glad that people are asking questions that might allow false answers to fall away so that what is true can be its truest even if what's truest doesn't feel like an answer?"
The conversation didn't get better from there.
But shouldn't a true thing only get truer the more we explore its truthfulness? And if it doesn't, shouldn't we want to not hold on to that thing?
Like at Kim's Airbnb, the beloved oasis where my sisters and I hid away after a particularly grueling season. A perfectly groomed yard with God-filled flowers, nestled among trees so large that any reminder we were in the suburbs never reached us, not once. Kim -- a delightfully odd and curiosity-inducing woman -- left us a tray of freshly-squeezed juices out on the porch every morning. We hot tubbed with wine every night. We read books in the hammocks and released the hard school year on the yoga platform, floated the lake for hours on end and basked in the outdoor showers.
"This is heaven," we knew.
The last night of our stay, Kim, who lives on the top floor of the Airbnb, invited us to join her and some friends for a small party. "Should we?" we wondered. "Do we trade a final night of hot tubbing in the gardens for strangers?"
Do we choose the unknown or the rhythms we've settled into?
Do we choose the questions or the answers?
We were just too curious about our quirky host, and that curiosity -- thank goodness -- won out.
It couldn't have been more than ten (poetically winding) stairs from our porch on the ground floor to Kim's deck. It was hardly a distance, hardly a climb, but at the summit our eyes were opened.
Mount Rainier, in all kingly glory, unobstructedly visible and vibrant and massively alive, just... There. In total splendor. A stationary trumpet fanfare.
"Has that been there this whole time?!" I blurted to laughter all around. I couldn't even move, and I didn't the rest of the night. I stayed on that deck, basically drooling. I'm surprised I ever came home.
The trees that had held us in restful shelter below -- that had cradled what we knew was heaven -- had also kept hidden that heaven's truest majesty.
What if we hadn't climbed? What if we hadn't explored? What if we hadn't followed our questions?
We'd have settled for an incomplete truth.
And incomplete truths, if we aren't careful, as we have seen -- they can settle into outright lies.
Sooo... I'm not going to write from answers. If that's what you came here looking for, you'll be gravely disappointed. Because I'm going to think keep thinking too much and asking questions out loud. I'm going to look for the details and the nuances and how they form the bigger picture. I'm going to climb to new elevations, new angles, and new perspectives. I'm going to wrestle with the letting go of answers not true enough, and stand in awe at what grows truer. I'm going to passionately and wildly wave at passersby to join me! Wonder is meant to be shared! And link arms (hypothetically -- I don't like to be touched) with these fellow wonderers and wanderers and let seeking be our only goal, open to surprises and delights and disappointments, too. I'll wade in the darkness that gives light its purpose, and I'll doubt and I'll toil through shadows. I'll go searching for God on trails that may look like they lead nowhere, because if there is anything I might know, it's that there isn't a trail God's not on. "Nowhere" is only ever "now here," I keep finding. Every trail will lead Somewhere. And those will lead to Somewhere Else, and those to Somewhere Else Even Beyond.
And they'll all have flowers to check along the way.
Just in case.
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