Of course, we prefer when life has easy solutions. Perhaps this is why so many people claim “everything happens for a reason.” However, theologian Stanley Hauerwas pushes back on that notion when he says, “The ability to live well is the ability to live without explanation.” Sometimes answers or reasons aren’t possible to know or understand. Are you someone who longs for meaning or reasons? What are some of the limitations of believing “everything happens for a reason?” How do you cope with the reality of so much mystery or uncertainty?
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Blessed are the Curious Question for the Week
Blessed are the Curious Question for the Week
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I have recently been learning about toxic positivity and I feel like it is something I certainly grew up with. I feel like everything happens for a reason has the potential for falling into that category. Really? Children dying in war overseas - that happens for a reason? My best friend dying of cancer before age 45? Yeah, I'm going to struggle with that. I think also, it perhaps diminishes our pain and struggle. But, it's for a reason people might say, ok, yes, I get that, but it still HURTS and is frustrating and upsetting that I didn't get the job offer I was really hoping for. Can we mourn this moment right now before we move on to the greater life lessons portion of this?
On the other side, it has also taken me a long time to learn to handle the sensory experience of holding mystery or the unresolved. Just like a chord that hangs not quite fulfilled, my body feels pulled or pushed, maybe DRAGGED (really depends on HOW unresolved things are) for it to CHANGE, to BE DIFFERENT, to move to the next stage where resolution happens and things settle and balance. So how do you hang in the unknowing, the discomfort, the feel of vertigo or the drag of potential? That part has been hard! To feel that actual almost tangibly physical sensation but to then acknowledge it, realize that I am unsettled, but also that I cannot alter that discomfort and then to keep resetting. Yes, I am unsettled, I feel it here here and here. It feels like this, I sense this. Breathe. Relax. It is not dangerous, just not equilibrium. And again as another wave of discomfort begins again.