Knowing we know that we know and that we don't ... know, that is

Monday 26 May 2008

I was trying to form a response to Goodfornowt's pondering a few days ago about how the Chinese earthquakes could fit into a world where everything belongs.

I don't know. I don't know in an intellectual, word-based articulation. But I know, in a deep, bone level knowing (where all the good stuff lives) that I know that I know that I know that it will. It is a deep, Spirit whispered breathing into my shaking, shuddering, leaching bones that nothing is wasted from this life, no suffering that we encounter.

Which is completely irrational, not based on anything evidentiary. Richard Dawkins would laugh me out of the water. But the things of God sometimes never make sense to the rational, intellectual, evidence-requiring mind. But it makes total sense to my spirit.

How annoying that is :)

Edit: of course, when I say that earthquakes "fit", I'm not saying that they are okay, not dismissing the evil and the pain and the suffering. In fact, I am saying the very opposite - that this stuff all matters so much that none of it seeps into the ground without it seeping into God and ultimately being reconciled. Believing that, in the redemption of all things including the earthquaked earth and the crushed and broken people - every person - is an opening toward compassion and love to the least, in my very limited view.

5 comments

  1. I'll take Julian of Norwich over Richard Dawkins any day:

    "Sin is behovely - it had to be - but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well..."

    Love & blessings

    Mike

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  2. Ahhh, yes, Mike.

    Well, you know, if there were any words tattooed on my heart, it would be these :)

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  3. The psychologist R.D. Laing once wrote a poem something like this:

    If you don't know you know, you think you don't know.
    If you don't know you don't know, you think you know.

    Your title and the mention of Dawkins reminded me of this.

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  4. Oooh, yes. It's kinda a constant thing to remember that we don't know, isn't it?

    But it feels so delicious out here in not knowing. I know more out here than I do when I'm in rigid little "I know everything" land.

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  5. That's it, sue. That's it. It is safe not to know because what is important is that we are loved. To demand to know all is a disguised attempt to wrest control from God.

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