Back and Forth

 

            I’ve said it so many times, but every time it is true.  I like reading something that strikes my fancy and leaves me saying, “Yes, that’s exactly the way it is.”  I use words enough to think that most of the time I can answer almost any question.  And typically I could speak for five minutes on most subjects.  In fact, I try to teach students to listen to conversations or ask questions that always lead to new ideas.  “Make yourself an interesting participant in a conversation,” I tell them.

            So it was when recently I was reading my local newspaper.  No doubt I am one of those dinosaurs who still likes to pick up a real paper and read it with a good cup of coffee.  That is my morning ritual.  I am sure it won’t be the same when all of the newspaper in the world either fold up and go out of business or are only available on line.  It will not be the same to grab a cup of coffee and beginning reading the paper online.  It is difficult to fold my computer in half, make it rustle and enjoy the feeling of it.  Such was a recent morning.

            Oddly enough for this inspirational thought, I was reading the opinion page section of the newspaper.  Normally I do not expect to be inspired by that section!  Rather I usually am frustrated or depressed.  The world in which we live is not always a nice world.  In fact, it is often frustrating and depressing.  But I read on in one of Maureen Dowd’s pieces.  (I read them all…liberals and conservatives)

            Quickly I was engaged.  She narrated the story of a Catholic priest, Fr. Kevin O’Neil.  Fr. O’Neil was confronted by questions of “why?”  I resonate with this question.  Anyone who has had two-year olds in the house gets this question repeatedly.  And people who go through hard times often have that question, “Why?”  I like Fr. O’Neil’s answer.

            Fr. O’Neil simply said, “The truest answer is: I don’t know.”  I love this answer, although I know for too many people, it is not an acceptable answer.  People do not want to know that a priest or some other authority figure does not know an answer.  To hear that from a priest or a physician appalls us.  Usually we want the certainty of an answer.  Not to know is bad news.

            Of course, there are arenas where there may be answers and I am simply ignorant.  I know, for example, that there are answers to physics’ questions, but I am ignorant about those answers.  But there are other areas where there seem to be no answers.  These are areas Fr. O’Neil and I would call the unexplainable areas.  Even if I were to give you an answer, it would not be a real answer.  It would merely be an answer to get you off my back!

            I prefer the lead of Fr. O’Neil.  He says, “I have theological training to help me offer some way to account for the unexplainable.”  I do, too.  But as the good priest says, “the questions linger.”  Unless something is a real answer, it is not actually an answer.  If you give an answer for something unexplainable, it is not a real answer. 

            Again, let’s listen to these priestly words.  “I remember visiting a dear friend hours before her death and reminding her that death is not the end, that we believe in the Resurrection. I asked her, ‘Are you there yet?’  She replied, ‘I go back and forth.’  I almost laughed out loud at this response!  Asking someone if they believe in the Resurrection is a pretty big question.  Of course, each one of us could confidently affirm it to be true.  But saying it is true and believing it in the deepest core of our being are two different things.  Like the lady, I think I “go back and forth.”  Maybe that simply makes me a wimpy Quaker!

But I am an educated, wimpy Quaker.  That is why I resonated with Fr. O’Neil’s words when he said, “There was nothing I wanted more than to bring out a bag of proof and say, ‘See? You can be absolutely confident now.’”  Just like Fr. O’Neil, I learned much in seminary and graduate school.  I could cite all sorts of people who should make anyone confident in the Resurrection.  But maybe it is still hypothetical unless you really are dying.

Again, I found Fr. O’Neil’s words insightful.  He confesses, “there is no absolute bag of proof.  I just stayed with her.”  Is that not what so much ministry is?  Ministry is “staying with someone,” even if we don’t actually have all the answers---or any answer.  Perhaps that is exactly what the school of life and school of love teach.  They teach us to stay with someone.  This is what O’Neil calls “a life of faith.”

He says, “A life of faith is often lived ‘back and forth’ by believers and those who minister to them.”  I don’t know whether this line is an answer at all.  But I do believe it is true---deeply true.  It seems so true to me because my life of faith is back and forth.  I understand this to be true because the life of faith is more than intellectual knowledge.  Faith is lived deeper---where trust and hope are worked out.  And very often, this working out is back and forth.