She tagged an incubus thought that I had yet to birth: “Perhaps real wisdom lies in not seeking answers at all. Any answer we find will not be true for long. An answer is a place where we can fall asleep as life moves past us to its next question. After all these years I have begun to wonder if the secret of living well is not in having all the answers but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company.” P 338.
She augments with the idea that as we court relationship with Mystery our need for smaller certainties fades. This need for sure certainties is replaced with an ongoing sense of awe, wonder, and growing gratitude to the One whose ways are as far above our ways as the heavens are above the earth.
Another thought she gave me as a jewel when the sun hits it: “fear is the friction in all transitions.” One role I have had and will have again is that of emotional WD-40. A little squirt here and there acts as lock-ease for the soul in motion from one small certainty to something else.
And another little story of a boy who had found a rainbow trout washed up from the cresting river into what was then a shrinking draining ditch. The trout was struggling to survive. The boy was heartbroken. He picked the trout up and rushed it back into the river. He remembered later, on his dying bed as an old man, the shiver of rainbow delight as the trout realized once again it was part of the river. As he too was soon to be.
One final snippet. When the Concorde was traveling at Mach 2, 1,350 mph, it used multiple computers to keep it on course. When traveling at such a high speed human reaction time was far too slow a corrective. So one computer was constantly jiggling the other back on course. They made little whirring noises as they corrected each other back and forth. One attentive passenger, who had been given a tour of the cockpit on the Concorde’s maiden voyage, asked, “what per cent of the time is the plane off course?” The pilot replied, “about 99% of the time. However we will arrive in Paris from New York at our projected time, plus or minus 60 seconds.”
The feedback systems between computers aren’t frictioned with the need to be right. They accept correction without quarreling. Could two pilots correct each other thousands of times in one flight without overheating defensiveness and argumentation? Could I stand to be wrong 99% of the time without losing courage? Lord, give me the humility to be corrected, adjusted, tuned to your hovering Spirit, moment by moment. Let me recognize when that correction from You comes thru another, or a stubbed toe, or a closed door as readily as through a hunch, word of knowledge, or flashing insight.
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