[Tension & Renewal - IV]
When we’re young and building our boxes of understanding, we’re hungry for answer, algorithms, explanations, definitions, and defendable theories. Answers to life’s hardest questions have such an appeal.
We look upon others that don’t have answers as intellectually lazy. Even weak.
As we age—spirituality, not necessarily physically—all of those definitions and theories gain asterisks. And the asterisks state: *tentatively or *provisionally.
Our most meaningful, deepest insights, which we might call spiritual knowing or even divine revelation, are all, at the end of the day limited by language. They are analogies and metaphors. They are approximations. That’s the best human language can achieve, because anything of ultimate meaning is in the realm of transcendence and mystery.
A real sign of awakening is not more confidence in our answer but more humility in our asterisks.
