January 11, 2006
Understand
I believe it was my old friend and mentor Canon P D Quirk who once told me, “Never question the truth of what you fail to understand, for the world is filled with wonders.” Surely it was he, for if it was not, the saying is so like him that for lack of someone else to whom to ascribe it, I am comforted merely to settle for him as the source.
Accepting that simple wisdom is of great value to me. For to understand something is not for to be able to define or describe it, but for it to have meaning, to urge one toward maturity. Description and definition have their place and are quite useful in a more scientific way. But there is too much finality about both, a determination that makes them more signposts along the way than the way, itself. It is the way, and following it, where there is meaning. For life is more exploration than experiment, it is searching for where, not tinkering with what.
There is so much that we fail to understand that just may be understood fully by our neighbor or by those who came before us. Jesus did not ask us to understand, but to love. And in loving, perhaps gradually to understand. I think I shall try this out on Quirk one of these days, but not anytime soon.