I read today that children ‘enter school as question marks and leave as periods’. Behind this statement is a long standing assumption. It goes something like, “you were made to produce” or “your value is intricately connected to what you can do, period.” The bible seems to subvert this whole idea with its central story, the exodus, being one completely at odds with this assumption. The exodus says, “You are no longer a slave, no longer enslaved by that stale system of periods.” Exodus assumes something new, liberation and the wonder of questions.
I sense that my friends and I have a lot of questions and not as many answers we may have thought we once had and were happy to have. Yet, community, sharing and love seem to answer back with confident voices—pushing the questions themselves toward exploration. I was even talking to a friend this morning and had mentioned a house I was moving into with some guys, guys I am ‘doing life’ with. He brought that phrase up, ‘doing life,’ and said—I like that. Life, is always exporative. And this is where the metaphor of a trail breaks down in some ways for me. Trails are linear while life seems like a directional spiral, a vortex of oddity and common place but rarely telos or arrival.
Maybe this is where liberation leads however, into the open space where life is done. Where we have room to fail and forgive each other and commit to the questions. I have been so encouraged by the people who have invited me into their lives. I find myself more and more at home with myself in this kind of situation.
