The Quality of Not Knowing
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by Carole Crumley
"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart...try to love the questions themselves..." -Rainer Maria Rilke
The month of January begins the Epiphany season in the liturgical calendar of many churches and is a reminder to me that I was ordained to the priesthood twenty-eight years ago. This came after much anguished debate in the Episcopal Church over the ordination of women and several years of my own wrestling with/discernment about the rightness of an ordained vocation. During that time, much of my support came from my seminary mentor and first spiritual director, Emma Lou Benignus.
Later on Emma Lou would complete Shalem's Spiritual Guidance Program, join our Board of Directors and then our Advisory Board. But at that time, she was part of INTER/MET Seminary here in Washington, a bold experiment in theological education that served Protestant, Jewish and Catholic students. At the age of 63, she had startled friends and colleagues by leaving a tenured position on the faculty of Episcopal Divinity School to cast her lot with this upstart, fledgling, untried organization. As Tilden Edwards said about that decision, "She just took off, risking everything, stepping out into the who-knows-what-ness of life."
Part of my struggle with ordination was around wanting to make the right decision, know answers, figure out what would happen, how it would be. After hours, weeks, months of listening and praying with me, Emma Lou finally said, "Oh Carole, you have prayed and prepared. Why don't you just go ahead and see what happens?" In other words, why not trust God's presence and action more than my own need to know.
This was the final nudge I needed. Her simple encouragement, permission really, to go ahead not having all the answers, not knowing how it would all work out, allowed me the freedom to proceed. Instead of holding back, I could step out into the who-knows-what-ness of ordination and trust God for the future. Instead of demanding answers first, I could simply stand in the Mystery and allow the next step to happen.
In Shalem's recent workshop, Richard Rohr suggested that there are different needs and kinds of support necessary for the two halves of life's spiritual journey. The wanting to know answers and direction characterizes the first half. He calls this a management and control spirituality believing that the more you know what you are doing, the better off you are. Perhaps, he suggests, we need to go through the first half. But as we become more open to recognizing intimacy with God, of God within us, then we become softer, more willing.
With the second half of the spiritual journey comes the realization that knowing more is not the answer and probably never was. If we think we know, then we are too likely to take off with this knowledge and leave God behind. So God takes away some of that intellectual grasping/comprehension way of knowing. As one longtime spiritual director described her spiritual journey, "In my beginning practice of contemplative prayer my goal was to have a quiet mind. Now it seems more true to have a 'don't know' mind and allow everything to belong."
Rohr suggested that our churches and religious institutions, really our whole American culture, are geared towards the work of the first half of the spiritual journey: certainty, security, giving answers, figuring things out, knowing about life with God. Little or no attention, however, is given by these same institutions or our culture to supporting seekers in the work of the second half of the spiritual journey, embracing the unknown-ness of life, radical trust in God, moving from intellectual knowledge about to a direct experience of God's loving presence.
Eighteenth century French Jesuit Jean-Pierre de Caussade in his Sacrament of the Present Moment tries to describe how people who are wholly given to God can never explain or justify their actions in normal ways. They are unable to say anything except "It seemed like a good idea at the time." Whether deciding what book to read or choosing one action rather than another, there is no advanced knowledge or planning. So much of our Western culture expects and sometimes demands that we know, have rational goals and logical reasons. Bowing to cultural demands, we have no way to justify this quality of not-knowing.
A college senior wrote recently that she was in turmoil because, she said, "I feel like I don't even know what I want in life. I don't know who I look up to or admire. I don't know what my goals are for the future... I know God is going to reveal to me, maybe, what His plan is for my future...'cause I kind of need to know what it is by May. I don't know...I'm just getting nervous."
Part of me wants to take this young woman by the hand and walk with her through all the uncertainties and questions. Help her find the answers. Certainly we want our young adults to take next steps, make a living, figure things out, have goals. Yet another part of me wants to say to her that not-knowing may not be an all bad thing. It may have its own special gifts. Instead of wrestling with the not-knowing, perhaps she could make it her friend.
Portions of this article are from my tribute to Emma Lou Benignus who died of injuries sustained in a car accident December 2004.
© 2008 The Shalem Institute.