Ah! Hello out there. My loves, my dearest, sweetest little treasures!
These are my final days in Porto, a city bathed in the light that reflects off glossy flower-patterned tiles. What am I doing, you ask? Sitting in cafes, listening to church bells toll, eating as many sardines as possible, running along the river, dancing in public (after said run), and leaving bits of myself behind (via strands of hair, obviously).
But more than any of those scrumptious bits, I have been loading my plate up with heaping spoonfuls of, you know, the obsessive need to figure things out. Make up answers. Make a plan.
After a church service yesterday, a woman approached me to introduce herself because she didnât want me to leave without, I guess, experiencing someone. As a first-time visitor, the person sitting beside me said I had to stand up and introduce myself and explain what I was doing in Porto, like all the other first-timers. The pastor from the front asked if I was there for vacation or work. I donât know â both and neither? Why only two options? I used an easy-to-understand term (digital nomad) so we could move on. Later, when this woman asked about it, I told her what I tell everyone else, which is that I only have a plan until October. She admitted she would never be able to travel without a firm plan and I said that I would like a plan too but God doesnât always work that way. As I walked out into the street, I remembered how yes, thatâs true, and yes, life with God means a lot of mystery, embracing mystery, dedicating time to the mystery, and loving the mystery.
So this is dedicated to you and the wonderful mystery that I often forget to love.
lvs
P.S. An audio recording of this one can be found just below.
xx
the unanswerable questions
Human beings occupy a singular place in the architecture of creation; resting on the apex of cognition and yet unable to comprehend the reason for its own existence. We are a great existential conundrum, and the only species burdened with the incessant need to know: Why and how are we here? The rest of creation is not parched by this everlasting thirst, nor do we necessarily feel our tongues dry when we explain that which is around us. We see how foxes thin the rabbits swelling numbers, bees pollenate flowers that will later fruit, and how mycelium stitches a forest floor together. We know why the salmon swim upstream, why the eelâs migration from their deep Sargasso home is thousands of miles long, why the morels grow secretly in fire-scorched earth. Each has its own reason; its own role illuminated with logical clarity. We look out to oceans and forests and mountains and all of the worldâs pieces and create a fabric of understanding.
But what about us? Where do we belong in the old manâs quilt? For all the uncertainties alive in the world, we are the greatest of all. Enormous vessels of mystery, a dissonant chord in a harmonious hymn, the mind of man demands to understand where we belong inside the network of existence, seeking answers and explanations because we cannot handle the enigma of ourselves.
We are the question that cannot answer itself but lives its life trying to.
These words find me eating a little brioche with cream and having a coffee under a patch of sunlight at this little cafĂ© down the street. The combination of sugar and caffeine entering my blood stream is causing a stupor of lightness to drench my body, too. A few yesterdays ago, while still in Madrid, I walked around with a heavy robe of questions around my shoulders. Soft and deep red, a whole life bore down on me and I tried to unravel a pesky thought. A single word that rises up from my stomach and expels everything Iâve ever done and experienced and learned. You know this word, and know it well, because we all know it. We are hypnotized by it, moths drawn to the fire that incinerates our beautiful newborn wings. And that word is: Why?
Why am I here? Why am I doing this or that? Why have I run away to this place? Why did I go to Madrid? To Porto? Why am I going still onward to other places? Why do I refuse to settle and slow down? Why am I like this?
Itâs a perilous place to live, inside the why. Though itâs a small thought, it opens up into a deep cavern of shadows that goes on forever; a maze of eternal inquisition. Inside the why we become obsessed with finding the exit, the bright door of logic that promises an absolution, an answer.
But there is no conclusion; there is no end to the why. There is no exit; only more roads cobbled with stumbling blocks. The why is eternal; a perpetual Hell of confusion.
why why why why!
Do you ever get trapped there? I sometimes do. I think about the meaning of life (my life in particular) and so naturally my logic-loving consciousness wants to know why. Itâs such an innocent place to begin, like a child wanting to know why B comes after A or why the skyâs blue or why we have to apologize. We all want to know why. What is the reason for the rules and the obligations and the systems? What is the reason for living one way or another?
A soul obsessed with finding meaning in everything naturally lends itself to occupying time thinking about the dots and how theyâre connected. Do you think about the meaning of life? Why you are here and why you are doing this and why you are the way you are? Do you ever find yourself in syllogismâs fight with the shining dagger of meaning in your hands? Tell me why! Ah, some days itâs a feverish fight until the death, until I am clutching my breast on the ground in a pool of my own blood. I get up and try again, and again, and again, against my merciless opponent.
Are we seeking an explanation or is it that what we really want is permission to exist? To just exist? To just exist beautifully, gracefully, gloriously?
I stop and look around. I close my eyes and look within. I am in the middle of this great beating heart; the secret core of being. What could need to be proven or explained? We are neither this or that, neti neti, a magic that does not give away its secrets.
Why are we here? To radiate with loving tenderness, to exemplify the wonder of all ages, to be a cosmic portal for the unknown to pour through, of course. Ah, mysterious nectar of wisdom; invisible voice of truth, I sit before this knowing with holy quietude. There is no need to explain away our mystery. Can I exist to exist? The answer is yes. We exist to be a remembrance of the sacred embodied in flesh.
In a world pressing for answers, be the mystery.
My soul passes from one space to another; today many questions died to be reborn again. Today the thing I realize I was seeking was not answers, but truth: a pure mode of being that is neither in the asking or the telling. If âwhyâ is a portal to a maze of questions, then surely there are places other thoughts and words lead us into. Words like âyesâ and âknowâ and âamâ and âI.â Ah, those are glorious pathways towards newborn worlds!
Being an object bobbing in this cosmic river comes with a lot of rigamarole. My lifestyle comes with a lot of questions and all of these unfulfilled ideas come tagged with them, too. The child within begs to know why. People around me also want to know. Everybody wants an answer; they believe there always is one. Every time I am asked a question about direction or work and identity and reason, I feel a grip around my heart. I fall into that misery of reason, into that incessant game of pretending the question is harmless when in reality it is strangling me. With every fragmented easy answer, I turn further away from the honest truth that is only ever standing with me. The truth that I exist to connect to existence; I am a loving light in a great milky cloud of bioluminescence. I am a splendid I am. I am pulsating with life from an unknown place. I am a little seed in the soil. I am the beginning of an idea that will never end. I am never ending. I am unexplainable. Why is the sky blue? Why is the sunset beautiful? Why is the owl wise? Why is the ocean healing? Why is love everything? Why you and why me? Ah, my love, there are a million truths but the greatest is yes. Yes, it is. Yes, you are. Yes, I am. We are here and then we are there and then we are not, for every reason and no reason at all. We are the love and the lover. We are the honey and the bee. We are the moss and the forest floor. We are the tongue that tastes the fruit and the ripeness of the tree. Yes, river, ocean, sunset, spirit, holy, being.
Today instead of asking, I am listening. Listening to the sparkling noonlight and the way my body feels as I dance my way down the street. I feel the overwhelming pleasure of cake with cherries and a glass of vinho verde and rub a catâs ear until she purrs and wash the oils of yesterday from my hair and watch a build-up of questions that didnât have an answer run down the drain.
I pass my hand over lichen and algae, over the outside of the oyster shells, over the smooth stone that separates me from the sea; a communion of elements and time. A living being; a covenant older than any religion. An agreement to exist for each other, for the sake of the great sum of being. The milkweeds and monarchs are bound to each other, just as I am bound to life itself.
Today I wander through that doorway of agreement. Yes. A complete answer. Maybe I feel this way because I ran, and danced, and ate cake, and felt light. Tomorrow? Hm, who knows what tomorrow will bring. Hopefully the feverish, caffeine-fuelled revelation that I am beyond explanation and reproach. Hopefully another ripe yes for the question of my existence. The knowing that it is perfect to be a human in a temporary state; that it is strange and beautiful just to exist. And how strange it is to be anything at all.
Running, and dancing, and eating cake.