The story of finding the young Jesus in the temple (Luke 2:
41-50) has been on my mind recently. In that story, after looking for him for 3
days, Mary and Joseph find the young Jesus sitting in the temple with the
elders and what does the gospel say He was doing? He was listening to them and
asking them questions (cf. Lk 2:46). It is Christ’s first encounter with the
scribes and elders, and what is He doing? Not preaching or chastising, not
correcting or telling them anything, but simply sitting with them, listening to
them, and asking questions.
Listening and asking questions… That phrase keeps coming back to me in prayer
and in meditation and even occasionally in the produce section at HEB. I think
part of why this image of Christ resonates so deeply with me is because I am a
librarian and in this image of Jesus I am reminded of something dear to my
heart: the act of reading. What do we do when we read but listen to the voice
of another, to the voice of Homer or Melville, Langston Hughes or Mary Oliver.
And as we listen we might find ourselves growing curious, asking questions; Why
did that happen? What does it mean? Is it true? How does it make me feel?
Listening and asking questions.
Think about what the world would be like if we all did more of that. If instead
of arguing or ignoring each other, we spent more time listening and asking
questions, what would the world be like? And who would we be like?
Attentive, active, deep reading is a life skill like no other, it not only
exposes us to ideas and art, history and imagining, but also to the practice of
listening and asking questions. If we let it, it prepares us for a life of
listening and asking questions. It is like Spring Training for being present to
others, practice for quietly, humbly bearing witness to their story, their
ideas, their feelings through patient and quiet attention. It is a life skill
desperately needed today; and if we aren’t careful in this age of scrolling and
streaming and AI-ing, we just might lose it and become like those idols the
prophets are always talking about:
“They have ears but do not hear
and eyes yet do not see…” --Jeremiah 5:21
