I heard of a woman who, finding herself drifting toward the middle of a dangerously feminist
conversation, stopped the group in the midst of the process. “I don’t want to hear any more about any
of this,” she said, “because if I did, I would have to change my life.” A wise woman. It is always so much
easier to assuage pain than to cure it, so much easier to accept a thing than to question it.
The ability—the commitment—to question, to examine every aspect of the human journey is the only
form of fidelity worth the price of admission to this sojourn called life. Otherwise, no sector of the
social anatomy to which we swear emotional allegiance can trust us to serve it well. It is the questions
we ask that move us from stage to stage of growing, that take us from level to level of our thoughts,
however simple the questions may seem.
I have just realized, in fact, how boring my own questions have been over the years: Do non-Catholics
go to heaven? Is sin the center of life? Or to put it another way, What is the “good” life? Does what we
give up in life make for more holiness than what we do? Is religious life incarnational or transcendent?
Don’t we really need to be violent sometimes? What is a woman? Can a woman be Catholic?
We each have our own personal set of questions. It is a worthwhile excursion into the soul to look at
the questions that have shaped our lives and ask what it was about them that intrigued us in the first
place, that changed us as we dealt with them, that brought me, as a result of them, to be the person
that I am today. After all, it is only in the light of our past that we understand the present with which
we grapple as well the future toward which we stride.
None of the questions that have consumed my life is completely answered, of course. We are still
struggling to bridge religious differences. We have yet to define social sin adequately. We are still in
search of peace in an increasingly brutal world. We are still dealing with a male power structure
everywhere. We have yet to deal with the role of women in the church in a theologically persuasive
and coherent way. But each of the questions has, at least, come to a head in my lifetime.
Even though I realize that all of my questions are admittedly a long way from resolution, Plato said
something else that convinces me that I would rather be asking them than not. “Everything that
deceives,” Plato said, “can be said to enchant.” I have been enchanted by far too many falsehoods in
life. I would rather go on living the struggle than go comatose in the face of answers that are not true,
were never true, cannot possibly be true. Most of all, I have indeed found that the process of
examining them has made my life worthwhile.
from the “Afterword: The Power of Questions to Propel: A Retrospective” by Joan Chittister in Spiritual
Questions for the Twenty-First Century: Essays in Honor of Joan D. Chittister, ed. Mary Hembrow
Snyder (Orbis)
conversation, stopped the group in the midst of the process. “I don’t want to hear any more about any
of this,” she said, “because if I did, I would have to change my life.” A wise woman. It is always so much
easier to assuage pain than to cure it, so much easier to accept a thing than to question it.
The ability—the commitment—to question, to examine every aspect of the human journey is the only
form of fidelity worth the price of admission to this sojourn called life. Otherwise, no sector of the
social anatomy to which we swear emotional allegiance can trust us to serve it well. It is the questions
we ask that move us from stage to stage of growing, that take us from level to level of our thoughts,
however simple the questions may seem.
I have just realized, in fact, how boring my own questions have been over the years: Do non-Catholics
go to heaven? Is sin the center of life? Or to put it another way, What is the “good” life? Does what we
give up in life make for more holiness than what we do? Is religious life incarnational or transcendent?
Don’t we really need to be violent sometimes? What is a woman? Can a woman be Catholic?
We each have our own personal set of questions. It is a worthwhile excursion into the soul to look at
the questions that have shaped our lives and ask what it was about them that intrigued us in the first
place, that changed us as we dealt with them, that brought me, as a result of them, to be the person
that I am today. After all, it is only in the light of our past that we understand the present with which
we grapple as well the future toward which we stride.
None of the questions that have consumed my life is completely answered, of course. We are still
struggling to bridge religious differences. We have yet to define social sin adequately. We are still in
search of peace in an increasingly brutal world. We are still dealing with a male power structure
everywhere. We have yet to deal with the role of women in the church in a theologically persuasive
and coherent way. But each of the questions has, at least, come to a head in my lifetime.
Even though I realize that all of my questions are admittedly a long way from resolution, Plato said
something else that convinces me that I would rather be asking them than not. “Everything that
deceives,” Plato said, “can be said to enchant.” I have been enchanted by far too many falsehoods in
life. I would rather go on living the struggle than go comatose in the face of answers that are not true,
were never true, cannot possibly be true. Most of all, I have indeed found that the process of
examining them has made my life worthwhile.
from the “Afterword: The Power of Questions to Propel: A Retrospective” by Joan Chittister in Spiritual
Questions for the Twenty-First Century: Essays in Honor of Joan D. Chittister, ed. Mary Hembrow
Snyder (Orbis)
THE POWER OF QUESTIONS TO PROPEL
Order this book now.
 |  |  |  |  |
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Home||Benedictine Sisters of Erie||Catalogue||Joan in the News||Contact Benetvision Fund for Prisoners||Retreats||About Benetvision||Ideas in Passing Benetvision • 355 East Ninth Street • Erie, PA 16503-1107 • Phone 814-459-5994 benetvision@benetvision.org • Fax 814-459-8066 Copyrighted © 2007 Benedictine Sisters of Erie, PA |
