The question was simple, "Are you going to the kitchen?"
I'm sure my partner wanted a simple "yes" or "no" answer. She's been frustrated with me before when she's only wanted yes or no answers and I give long, drawn out answers. So, true to my nature, I pause and answer, "I'm going to put clothes in the dryer." I want to be honest and specific. Even as I answered, I recognized the absurdity in my explanation since our dryer is right there in the kitchen in a closet.
Lucky for me, my partner loves me. There was no aggravation at my extended explanation even though SHE knows the dryer is in the kitchen. I think she's becoming accustomed to my idiosyncrasies, my unusually response to life and its events. She listened and then patiently continued,
"Can you get me a coke while you're down there?"
Now THAT question I could answer with a yes. There were no ambiguities in the question. As usual, I analyze a simple interaction the entire time I'm putting the sheets in the dryer and taking a coke to her in the loft where we both have desks. I see a part of me that has tried to surface before. I am not a black and white person. I see the world, life in shades of gray or green or blue. There have been instances where I thought my compunction to explain came from my upbringing by strict parents who always required me and my sister to explain things that sometimes we couldn't explain because we were kids or teenagers who didn't know better. Sometimes we couldn't explain things because we didn't understand the question or we thought the answer was so obvious it didn't need explanation. "Why do you want to become a music major," was a question I never thought needed explanation and no matter how many answers I gave none were sufficient. My sister's questions of course focused on her life's desires, "why are you in such a rush to get married?" We had dreams and thought we were to grow into those dreams even if they differed from our parents' dreams for us, even if our decisions brought copious questions about the meaning of our choices. As a child, I asked so many questions about why, maybe they fostered and fed my parents' own questions of "why?" The song I loved most and identified with most is one found in the movie, Yentl and titled, "Where is it written." When Barbara Streisand sang the first phrases to the song the recognition of self so great I felt hope.
There's not a morning I begin without a thousand questions running through my mind,
That I don't try to find the reason and the logic in the world that God designed.
The reason why a bird was given wings, If not to fly and praise the sky
With every song it sings.
What's right or wrong,Where I belong
Within the scheme of things...
And why have eyes that see and arms that reach
Unless you're meant to know there's something more?
If not to hunger for the meaning of it all,
Then tell me what a soul is for?
A question that many think requires a simple "yes or no" has never been simple for me. Perhaps there was some undiagnosed problem I've always had, but questions, even the simplest questions have always generated thousand more
questions. The world wants yes or no or this or that and I ponder. I've always needed more time to think on things before giving an answer. As I've aged, I remember the blessing of watching my Grandpa Whitley sit on his front porch pondering wheat and I realized that I understood him and his pondering and his solitude. How can a simple request for a coke send me into such analytical thinking, deep soul searching? Needless to say, not many people "get me" but my partner now does and as a result, there are answers coming that I never expected to find. Sometimes my kind love's feelings are hurt because my need to explain (when none is needed) seems like a questioning of motives. There have been those times of course, but as I age and heal from past hurts through her loving me, I'm beginning to see that this excessive explaining has more to do with all the shades and tones I see and feel to life.
I remember one Saturday as a kid riding with my mom in her dark green Monte Carlo. We had just turned left at Big Lick's Trading Post to go
to downtown Oakboro. I don't know what I asked her, but I remember her answer, the brightness of the day, the stillness of my sister in the backseat as though it were now. Mom's answer was, "Robin, I don't know the answer to that question. Only God knows that answer." Oh how I loved God even more in that moment for God could answer all my questions. That's the moment when I began questioning God; not questioning God's existence but to pray. Yes, that is the moment I began to pray and as we all know, answers to prayers don't always come soon or easy. Sometimes they do, but more often than not, they are silent answers that we must grow into…and there are always those questions we must ponder for a lifetime. Sometimes the lesson comes as Rilke writes as "learning to love the questions." Others call it living the mystery.
The irony for me is that our world demands this or that, black or white, now or never and nothing in life is really "either or". This is a world of shades, tones and the both "this and that". Christianity exhorts us to "live in the world but not of the world" while we can no longer stand the mysteries. We want answers or the Dragnet response of "just the facts ma'am." We can't sit in silence because the questions come with no answers. Even as I write this essay I ask myself, "what is the point of this?" Mystery. Explanation. Thesis or conclusion. Where am I going with this writing? Where am I going with my life? What are you doing and what are your questions?
The sky is a shade of gray today. That doesn't mean it will rain, just that the sky is different than blue and that doesn't make it bad or wrong. I look over the mountains on this spring day and my eyes behold hundreds of shades of green as the trees bloom for the year. Even when the blooming and the pollinating stops, the shades of green on the mountain will vary with the wind or rain; from dark forest green to the shimmer of silver green fluttering in the wind. The sky moves from blues and grays to pink and purple over the mountains. Oranges and reds sing and sometimes scream the glory of life flaming on the horizons of today. In the shades of gray sky, day turns into night and yet, it's all still good and right and mystery.
All my love asked for me was this question, "Are you going to the kitchen?" and my mind rides a storm of questions with no answers and no reasoning but my dreams have been that too. The day calls for answers and I have none so instead I write my ponderings and give thanks for those who listen. Life is full of blessing. It's all good. Mystery reigns.
There's not a morning I begin without
A thousand questions running through my mind,
That I don't try to find the reason and the logic
In the world that God designed.
The reason why
a bird was given wings,
If not to fly and praise the sky
With every song it sings.
What's right or wrong,
Where I belong
Within the scheme of things...
And why have eyes that see
And arms that reach
Unless you're meant to know
There's something more?
If not to hunger for the meaning of it all,
Then tell me what a soul is for?
Why have the wings
Unless you're meant to fly?
And tell me please, why have a mind
If not to question why?
And tell me where-
Where is it written what it is
I'm meant to be, that I can't dare
To have the chance to pick the fruit of every tree,
Or have my share of every sweet-imagined possibility?
Just tell me where, tell me where?
If I were only meant to tend the nest,
Then why does my imagination sail
Across the mountains and the seas,
Beyond the make-believe of any fairy tale?
Why have the thirst if not to drink the wine?
And what a waste to have a taste
Of things that can't he mine?
And tell me where, where is it written what it is
I'm meant to be, that I can't dare-
To find the meanings in the mornings that I see,
Or have my share of every sweet-imagined possibility?
Just tell me where- where is it written?
Tell me where-
Or if it's written anywhere?
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