To Question (I)

Yesterday, Pastor Lori didn't talk.  Thankfully, we were aware of this ahead of time, so we could prep Jo in her going-to-church litany.  "Tammy's gonna talk today." 

The gospel lesson took us through the disciples' infighting about greatness and landed right next to us, in the second-to-the last row, surrounded by crayons and color books and another two-year-old going at a hymnal with yellow-green.

Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me." (Mark 9.36-37)

And so we were called to think both about and alongside children yesterday, particularly in reframing the questions.  The disciples raise the question earlier, "Who is the greatest?"  But the point is not the question--not that question, anyway.  The point is the asking. 

What is the question?  Too often, we seek the answer.  And, short of that, we spend our lives trying to get the question right.  Maybe it's neither the right answer nor the right question.

But the process of asking--and asking, and asking, and asking (as any parent of a two-year-old knows)--is the process of, on the one hand, coming to know the world, and, on the other, confirming over and over that there is someone there, listening to the questions.

Jo's has a few favorite questions of late, including, "What are we wearing?" (for bedtime pajamas), "What's his name?" (for everyone from Thomas and Percy the trains to all of the people at the grocery store), to "What are we gonna do now?" (waking words after yesterday's nap).  The questions themselves are good to consider, but greater still is the questioning itself.