Nobody Knows

In the absence of faith, I turned to philosophy. For two years I wrestled with the big names and ideas. I liked how the philosophers faced the hard questions. I was disappointed to discover that after all these years all they have managed to produce is a rat’s nest of theories.

What is this place? How did we get here? Why does it hurt so much? What happens when we die? The harder I looked, the clearer it was no one knew. 

Ignorance took shape and became a Specter that haunted me. It appeared so frequently that I named it: Ignarus. I liked the honesty of Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker in Batman: The Dark Knight. The Joker is terrifying, not because he is insane, but because he is not. He courageously faces Ignarus and accepts the logical conclusion that life is meaningless. The Joker leans into nihilism and devotes his life to exposing people’s ridiculous coping strategies. It was horrifying but at least it was honest.

To my surprise, Ignarus did not just destroy my faith. He gave me something I had been looking for my whole life: a universal human family. I had tried to forge this from my Christian faith but no matter how far I stretched it, I always wound up with insiders and outsiders. Now, suddenly, I found myself in the universal family I longed for, standing on the common ground of our ignorance. Our connection wasn’t anything we had found. It was the fact that we were lost.

I rode my bike to work in the dark at 4:30a.m. so Julie would have the car when she came at 10:00am. Most mornings I was so tired and disoriented that it felt like pedaling through outer space. One cold morning, as rain beat down on my bike helmet, a children’s song bubbled up from some hidden recess.  

      Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are,
      Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky,
      Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are.

      I found it comforting so I sang again, louder. 

      Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are.

      I sang it over and over. The louder I sang, the better I felt. Tears ran down my cheeks and splashed on the pavement. I must have been a sight, riding in the dark and rain, crying and singing. 

      If a policeman had pulled me over, I could not have explained my behavior. Later, I found the word for it: wonder. It’s what I felt as a toddler, when my mother bathed my little soul in Chopin. Wonder is why I loved to traipse the hills of the Palouse with my dog, Brute, and take long walks beneath the stars with the yipping of coyotes in my ears. Wonder is what I heard in the sound of the horn. Wonder made me hoist my backpack and plunge into the wilderness alone. What I felt on that cold, rainy morning in West Seattle was nothing new. It was a friend who had never left my side. 

For months after Ignarus devoured my faith, all I could see was the ruins of my faith. I thought the door to meaning was closed. But Ignarus hadn’t closed the door to anything. It opened the door to everything. It was faith that had locked me up. Faith was been my attempt to get a grip on wonder. I thought if I studied the Bible, went to seminary, mastered theology, learned Greek, I could grasp it. But the tighter I squeezed, the less I had. It was like trying to wrap my arms around the ocean. 

      Today I wake each morning like Alice in Wonderland and set out on an adventure. Meaning no longer hangs from a thread of faith. It floats on a sea of wonder. I go exploring, whistling as I go, 

      Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are.