What questions are you asking?

The other night I was having dinner at Highland House, one of the L’Arche homes in Arlington. At the end of dinner, someone typically comes up with a question for everyone to answer, accompanied by each person’s prayer requests.

For some reason we were having trouble coming up with a question when Brooke leaned back in the candlelight (lights are turned out for prayer time at Highland House) and smiled. “Ah,” she said. “I’ve got a good one. What questions have you had lately?”

I loved this. I love questions in general (and find a way to incorporate question-asking into pretty much any talk or workshop I hold*) as a means of getting to know self and others, but have never thought to ask someone else purely: what are you wondering about?

Answers around the table varied: Why is the grass green? This one made me catch my breath: how can I live a simple and mystic life? And: how do you love someone you disagree with?

So I have been thinking about that these past few days, and will take this forward with me, to check in now and again and wonder, what questions do I have right now?

Here is what I have had the past couple days:

• Are you compromising your own faith when you affirm what others believe?

• What do virtue and habit have to do with each other if virtue is unearned and comes from God?

• Do people with disabilities live outside of time the way God does? (obviously, not in a physical sense - but in their own way of viewing and interacting with the temporal world)

• What role does government have in building community?

So anyway, those are a few.

*If the practice of question-asking sounds interesting, register for my March 7 workshop, Know Thyself: A Workshop for Growing in Self-Awareness! Prayer, writing and naming one’s values will be discussed and practiced; one needs to learn how to ask good, self-searching questions to do any of these three things, and certainly to know oneself. Shazam, people!