is.”
And, of course this might work once or twice, until the curious expanding little mind catches on. So, we transpose the why into the more answerable how and explain the science or physics of something. But that still hasn’t answered the question. We can always figure out how. It’s the why that always leaves us wondering. I can study and come to understand, for example, the fascinating science and optics of how twilight interacts with the rods and cones of our eyes. But that doesn’t come anywhere near answering what I think is the more interesting question of why the dawn or dusk stirs the soul or imagination so. That’s something else entirely.
All our human nature ever really wants is a final answer. But the fact is any search for understanding is most productive when every question leads not to a succinct answer but to yet another even more interesting question. The most profound truths always feel more like beginnings than endings. All of this isn’t to say that how cannot be a helpful question—it can be. Especially when asked in the context of such inquiries as “how do we know what we know?” or “how do we know something is real?” Or, “how can we be certain of a certain thing—of anything?” But then the answers to these questions probably have more to do with squirrely belief than actual proof. Further, they are about the difference between believing that something is or happened, versus believing in something as truth. Or as the poet Rilke famously suggested, about not seeking or finding the answers, so much as living out the questions themselves.9
Perhaps best known for his contributions to physics and mathematics, Sir Isaac Newton produced far more written materials on biblical interpretation. While he acknowledged the clutch of gravity and its role in the universe—the motions of the planets—he ultimately found (and admitted) it could not explain who or what first set the planets in motion. Henry David Thoreau tried to keep two journals, one for recording “just the facts,” and the other for more poetical musings. But he ultimately found the world full of poetry.10 Science and religion operate in the same arena. They simply speak different languages: one a dialect of fact, the other a poetry of faith; one of knowing, the other of believing.
Truth is never singular.
There are forces in the universe which we do not, and cannot understand, despite our endless inquiry—forces that are not diminishing but expanding. Forces that bind atom to atom across time and space; forces like gravity that bring us into each other’s orbit; forces that catch us when we fall and lift us up; forces that propel light through darkness faster than we can ever imagine. Some refer to the dynamic forces that are thought to move throughout the universe as Shakti. Others call those same forces Brahma, or Holy Spirit, or even God (by whatever name). Still others call this life-force Source, or the Absolute, or the Tao. For some the forces that both expand and hold together the universe are simply energy, light, and matter.
I use the word “prayer” to express the discipline of striving to pay attention to the why and speechless wonder of these forces. But there are plenty of other choices. If you’re not comfortable with prayer, there’s contemplation, concentration, careful observation, or even the call of the heart. For some putting one foot in front of the other can be prayer. Listening deeply is perhaps one of the most profound spiritual disciplines. I would no sooner presume to tell you what words to use when engaging with the eternal than how to do it. If a word gets in your way, translate it into something that has meaning for you and what you take seriously about life. The Sufi mystic Jalal al-Din Rumi famously noted there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. The Talmud states that it is permissible to pray in any language that you can understand. “Pray as you can,” one Christian monastic adage councils, “not as you can’t.”
There is, in fact, a charming story from the Jewish tradition that speaks to this aspect prayer. There was once a young boy who wanted to pray but did not yet know many Hebrew words; all he knew was the letters of the aleph-beth, or “alphabet,” so that became his prayer. One day as he was praying what he knew—his letters—a rabbi heard him and asked why he prayed in that way. The wise little one declared, “The Holy One knows my heart. I give him the letters, and he puts the words together.”
Eventually, the Benedictine sense of time overflowed the walls of medieval monasteries and the Liturgy of the Hours became a rhythm of life even for some who lived and worked in the distinctly secular villages beyond the religious compounds. Elegantly penned and bound Christian devotional manuscripts known as “Books of Hours” contained an abbreviated form of the Divine Office designed for the average lay person and were widely available and popular by the fifteenth century. The original daily planners, every appointment was with God. Their pages were comprised of a collection of litanies, prayers, psalms, and excerpts from the Gospels, and were considered palm-sized and portable cathedrals. The wide margins surrounding the elegant medieval calligraphy of each page’s sacred text were often elaborately decorated with illustrations—illuminations—of the daily, the mundane, and the ordinary moments of everyday life.
If the mystics were right, as surely they were, and every creature is a book about God, then each moment is a letter in a sacred alphabet even if we don’t yet understand the whole word. And every one of our hours is a holy chapter in the story of eternity—the story of us.
A book of ours.
1. Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, 205.
2. Emerson, The Complete Works, VII: 180.
3. I refer, of course, to Tevye the Dairyman, the central character in an eponymous story originally written by Sholem Aleichem, and the opening scene of its more widely known theatrical and film incarnations, “Fiddler on the Roof.” See Aleichem, Tevye the Dairyman; and Norman Jewison et al., Fiddler on the Roof.
4. In Hoeppe, Why the Sky Is Blue, 236.
5. An idea he expressed in a letter to his brother Theo. See “Letter 531” in van Gogh, The Complete Letters, III:26. Perhaps more famously, Vincent expressed in later correspondence his struggle between organized religion and personal worship: “That does not keep me from having a terrible need of—shall I say the word—religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars.” See “Letter 543” in ibid., III: 56.
6. See, for example, Kardong, Benedict’s Rule, especially chapter 73; and McQuiston, Always We Begin Again.
7 Mother Teresa expressed this sentiment many times and in many ways. See, for example, The Joy in Loving, 43; and throughout Stern, Everything Starts from Prayer.
8. Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, 26.
9. His oft-quoted advice to an aspiring poet: “Don’t search for answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” In Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, 46.
10. On February 18, 1852 he wrote in his journal: “I have a commonplace book for facts, and another for poetry, but I find it difficult always to preserve the vague distinction which I had in mind, for
