I Don’t Know
Recently I was making a presentation to a class of social workers taking a required course in Spirituality in Social Work. First of all, I was impressed that this was a required course. Go Roberts Wesleyan! Second, I was impressed with how many felt spirituality was an important aspect of care. Silly me, for thinking they would think otherwise. After I had run through my slide show, the instructor asked me how I might respond to someone who asked, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” I started by saying, “Why do bad things happen at all?” and “Who is a bad person?” That was a rabbit hole I began digging all on my own.
I’m seminary trained and I’m an ACPE certified Educator. I was the expert caught on the hook of that little word “why”. “I can tell you why” … I thought in my haste. Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote a whole book on it, so certainly I can cover it in few minutes. I could feel myself sinking in my own words - not particularly bad words, but too many words. It’s a valid question, and one that many of us have probably asked ourselves when life has treated us unfairly. A deep question like that deserves a little space … and silence … not words. “Why, indeed? Why do bad things happen to good people?”
The answer is, “I don’t know.” You might think that’s a cop out, a dodge, a slight of hand maneuver to get yourself out of a tricky situation, but it’s really … the truth. I don’t know. I don’t know, AND I’m happy to talk about that with you. I don’t know, AND sometimes that is incredibly frustrating, and anxiety making, and feels just plain crappy. I don’t know, AND I wish I did. But to say anything else, diminishes the question and the person asking. Finding the answer is often a long process of looking back or of paying attention to the present. It’s not a question that can be answered in the moment, especially in the moment of crisis. It needs space to be discovered. The answer is often the process of ruminating on it, and letting it marinade in conversations with other people, hearing their experiences, and creating your own meaning out of the mix. The answer has to be our own, not someone else’s.
That’s a chaplain’s secret weapon, silence and space. We aren’t the ones who come in with the answers. We’re the ones who can sit with the questions. We’re the ones who can be comfortable with the helplessness of not knowing, because we are not hopeless. We trust that the person we are caring for has all they need within them, if only they can uncover it. In this season of isolation and anxiety that we call The Pandemic, people are asking these kinds of questions, and looking for answers. You could be someone who journeys with them. It’s a vulnerable and privileged place to be. I wish I had said those three words in that Zoom classroom space, but I didn’t. The beauty is that the conversation really didn’t end when I clicked “Leave Meeting”. It continued in my head and heart, on my walks and in my prayer. It led me to this blog post. So embrace the “not knowing”, engage the conversation and trust that what is sacred in us will lead us and those we care for to the answers we need.
