A Book of Questions is a song on the new album A Great Wild Mercy by Carrie Newcomer. It is also the title of a recent posting on her A Gathering of Spirits Substack newsletter.

It was an early paragraph in that newsletter that really caught my attention:

I’ve often said that I don’t write songs because I have an answer, I write songs because I’m writing myself into my next becoming. I’m writing because I have a question.

I love the idea of using questions to “write myself into my next becoming.” Then I looked at the lyrics as she sang the song and thought of how several of her questions could prompt serious reflection — and perhaps writings that lead to a next becoming — for me.

Do you put honey in your tea? | Do you let it cool gradually? | Do you feel the strange wash of time and memory? | Have you made peace with your worst day, | Ever kissed in a busy café? | Are there things you feel, but you still don’t know how to say?

In fact, Newcomer speaks to the power of questions in her post.

An open-hearted question is a beautiful way to get to know another person. When I’m at a gathering and meeting new people I often like to ask opening questions that go beyond the usual “what do you do”. I often ask questions like “what gave you life this year” or “What were you grateful for this week”. People will sometimes look at me like I have seven heads, but then they will launch into the most wonderful stories. I always feel grateful for the story and feel I got to know the person much better than if I had asked the usual fare.

Some questions are simple but personal . . . But other questions ask for a deeper, even more vulnerable response, “Did you make peace with your worst day” “Did you ever love a place, that you still had to leave”.

Questions, it seems, prompt a number of artists, including the poet Mary Oliver.

Some Questions You Might Ask

Is the soul solid, like iron?
Or is it tender and breakable, like
the wings of a moth in the beak of an owl?
Who has it, and who doesn’t?
I keep looking around me.
The face of the moose is as sad
as the face of Jesus.
The swan opens her white wings slowly.
In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness.
One question leads to another.
Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg?
Like the eye of a hummingbird?
Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop?
Why should I have it, and not the anteater
who loves her children?
Why should I have it, and not the camel?
Come to think of it, what about maple trees?
What about the blue iris?
What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight?
What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves?
What about the grass?

---

A Gathering of Spirits arrived in my email inbox around the same time that I received a recent sermon from my friend and mentor Frank Wade.

Frank begins with the passage from Matthew 22 where the Pharisees were trying to trip Jesus up by asking a trick question: Was it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar?

Everybody hated the Roman occupation and resented paying taxes to support it. If you were for it, the people resented you. If you were against it, the Romans saw you as a rebel.  It was a trap.  Jesus held up a coin and said, “Give to the Emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” That was really clever, the kind of response I usually think of an hour after a conversation is over. 

Tax codes and accountants tell us what things are due the government. Frank asks, “But what are God’s things? What does God require of us?”

Scripture practically boils over with responses to that question. They all point in the same direction, but one of my favorites is from the prophet Micah who gave his answer about 700 years before Jesus’ time. Micah scoffed at our pretending not to know what God expects of us.  You know, he says, what the Lord requires of you.  What is it but to do justice and love mercy and walk humbly with your God?

But what exactly does that mean? Frank makes it personal and relatable.

When we read or speak about justice and mercy we are usually talking about societal issues. Social justice on a large scale. Merciful responses to world events and continuous crises. Those things definitely are part of what Micah is talking about.  But justice and mercy have a micro reality, as well.  Justice is about fairness. Mercy is about generosity. The world needs those things and so do our families. Listening to one another without judgment is an act of fairness.  Admitting our own faults and errors is fairness. Doing one’s part to make the household function is fairness. They are justice issues on the family level. Generosity can determine how we spend time with those we love, how we encourage one another, and how we let the people closest to us know they are special to us. Justice and mercy, fairness and generosity, are part of God’s expectation for the world at large and for the world at hand.

. . . we are to give to God the things that are God’s — justice and mercy, fairness and generosity, extended to the far reaches of our world and to our closest companions.  

As Frank says, this is “simple but not easy.”

And the questions Carrie Newcomer asks us to consider are sometimes simple but may not be so easy to face.

Did you say yes, did you say no? | Was it true or just wasn’t so? | Did it land hard or gracefully, | Was it not what you planned, | But right where you needed to be?

Are there questions you need to consider, leading you to your next becoming?

More to come . . .

DJB

Photo by David Wirzba on Unsplash.