Ripening Time by Sherry Ruth Anderson

Author:Sherry Ruth Anderson [Anderson, Sherry Ruth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-78099-962-3
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
Published: 2013-10-25T00:00:00+00:00

Befriending the Questions

Eventually I learned that I needed to befriend my questions. Not use them, because they are not inanimate objects like stars or compasses or GPS devices. Questions, after all, come from us, from our longing to understand something true about our lives. If we just want information, we can connect with a library feed. Maybe—rarely—we will go and see for ourselves: how glaciers look when they’re calving; what it’s like to be on the Platte River when Sandhill Cranes rise in their thousands; the way rain changes the light on Amsterdam’s canals.

But when it comes to intimate knowing, we need to let our questions find their way to us.

It’s a little hard to talk about this. It’s personal, the way that having a friend is personal. To be receptive to your questions is like leaning in to listen when a friend talks to you about something that really matters to her. You open yourself. You don’t have an agenda stuck away in your back pocket.

I hope it’s evident that these kind of deep questions aren’t likely to show up as fully formed sentences or wake us from a dream as Rose’s did. Sometimes that happens, but more often questions are musings, wonderings, fears or sorrows or joys that arrive for no reason we can name. They may be vague and repeated inclinations toward or away from something we can’t define. So we hurry past them, brushing them away like fruit flies around the pineapple. Rarely do we take the time to pause, settle down, and let ourselves be curious about anything, including, or maybe especially, our experience of growing old.

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