"The mystery always contains more mysteries. Do I really want it this way?"
— Ann Voskamp
"What are you talking about as you walk along the way?
"As we come and go, we greet each other with some variation of the question, How are you? or What's up? If we're being transparent, we know that sometimes we say this to be polite, but sometimes we ask because we're concerned or curious about that person's spot in the cosmos at that moment.
"Casual acquaintances respond with 'I'm fine' or 'Nothing.' Deep friendships respond with detail, frustration, joy, and ambiguity. Perhaps 'What's up' is a bigger question that we think.
"Picture two men walking along the road and Jesus asking them, 'What are you discussing together as you walk along?' (Luke 24:17).
"There is likely no more normal, ground-level question than to ask people what they're thinking about. It is a request for access to their simple, everyday life, a request to hear the echoes and whispers that have made up their conscious hours thus far. Our curiosity runs headfirst into practicality.
"Curiosity matters only if we are attentive to real life.
"Henri Nouwen observes, 'The spiritual life is not a life before, after, or beyond our everyday existence. No, the spiritual life can only be real when it is lived in the midst of the pains and joys of the here and now.'
"Pains and joys.
"Here and now.
"These contexts and containers of the spiritual life are built to brim with curiosity.
"The great grace of curiosity is that it allows us to enter difficult and unsteady rooms of life and find the centering, peaceful presence of Jesus inviting us to come deeper still. This is how we live joyfully, hopefully, even though we feel a mortal wound (Job 13:15). This allows us to sing 'Amen' to Julian of Norwich's statement of resilience: 'All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.' "
