A Restless Curiosity
If you happen to be out this week shortly after sunset, (you should still be able to see Mars just above the horizon after sunset in November) look up into the sky towards the south west and you will see a crescent moon. And just below the crescent moon and to the right a bit will be the planet Mars. On the front of your order of service sheet for today there’s a picture of the NASA Mars Rover which is, as we speak, gently trundling across the landscape of Mars, the so called Red Planet, sampling rocks and taking photos. It’s taken a photo of its own shadow here and in the far distance you can see Mount Sharp, one of the places it’s heading to on its tour of Mars. The robot has been aptly named Curiosity and its mission is planned to last one ‘Mars year’ – about 23 earth months. Only this week, Curiosity has found an unusual rock on the surface of the Red Planet – a rock which has now been called Jake by the scientists back at Mission Control.
Whilst we’re looking at the order of service sheet there’s a lovely quote from Stephen Fry from his book The Fry Chronicles extolling the virtues of curiosity: “there is no reason why anyone should understand how it works… and of course no reason why anyone should care … unless you are curious, in which case I love you, for curiosity about the world and all its corners is a beautiful thing.” It’s a very human quality curiosity – yet it’s also a delightful quality to observe in animals – so perhaps it’s more accurate to say that curiosity is a quality of being alive – a way of being truly and fully alive to our surroundings.
It’s the quality that made me fall in love with a rat – at least for a while. When I lived in Sheffield my office desk looked out into the garden and one Monday morning I was musing on the work we’d done over the weekend – completely changing the shape of a rockery – moving stones and shrubs around. That morning I watched entranced as a good size rat made its way across the rockery – stopped midway, stood up on its back legs and surveyed our work – had a good look round as if he was saying in a ratty voice – “oh dear me, no, I wouldn’t have put the rock rose back there”.
If we consider the history of humanity and our relentless exploration of, and expansion across, our planet earth home – it’s clear that some basic needs were the driving force behind our explorations – a need for more land, more food, a mate etc. Yet there seems to be another quality that also drives us on and the Vikings have a word to describe it – aefintyr, which is translated as ‘restless curiosity’. That is the spirit that compels humanity to go exploring, to take the road less travelled, to set out bravely towards an unknown horizon even at a time when people believed that our earth was flat and that you could, therefore, reach the end and fall over the edge into the abyss. Still those ancient mariners set off to explore they knew not where. And today our scientists continue to explore – as the Curiosity Rover makes its way across the planet Mars and the Hubble telescope brings us images of far distant galaxies – meanwhile we are exploring ever deeper depths of our oceans and ever more minute explorations of our own biology. Neuroscience and MRI scans are allowing us glimpses of the workings of our brains. There is a lot of exploring going on.
Author T H White wrote about the young king Arthur and his advisor Merlin in his book The Once and Future King. In this passage Merlin encourages Arthur to explore as a way of learning. “And one of the reasons we explore is because we want to learn, to know more, to understand better. The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”
The learning that Merlin is advocating here is not the dull routine of reciting your 9 times table, (although over a cup of tea later on, do ask me about the exciting 9 times table secret that I only learnt a few years ago). Merlin is advocating a learning that excites, that brings a sense of wonder. And a sense of wonder can be stimulated by travel – by the actual taking of a journey. But awe and wonder can also be our natural orientation in life – they can be the qualities through which we view the world – our lens. Anyone who has spent time with a young child knows their irrepressible curiosity about the world – they want to know for themselves that the fire is hot, that the knife is sharp, that the dog has teeth – and it’s a healthy parent who can balance the need to protect a child with the need to allow their freedom to explore. Such exploration can surely not just be the preserve of the young? Author Jostein Gaarder, who wrote the introduction to philosophy for teenagers called Sophie’s World, believes that philosophers too must retain this child-like sense of wonder. “So now you must choose… Are you a child who has not yet become world-weary? Or are you a philosopher who will vow never to become so? To children, the world and everything in it is new, something that gives rise to astonishment. It is not like that for adults. Most adults accept the world as a matter of course. This is precisely where philosophers are a notable exception. A philosopher never gets quite used to the world. To him or her, the world continues to seem a bit unreasonable – bewildering, even enigmatic. Philosophers and small children thus have an important faculty in common. The only thing we require to be good philosophers is the faculty of wonder…”
This is the philosopher’s task – to remain child-like in their approach to life. It’s a path of not knowing, of not being sure or certain – of accepting that state of not knowing and being open to the paradoxical nature of our existence. For there is so much we don’t know.
Yes we are clever enough to build a robotic Rover called Curiosity and send it to the planet Mars – yet if you are anything like me there is rarely a day that goes by where I don’t find myself asking at some point ‘why on earth did I just do that?’ or ‘why did that person say that?’ or ‘why do we humans make such a mess of things?’ as I hear yet another news story that leaves me shocked or confused – you’ll have your own versions of these questions I suspect.
And it is this sort of curiosity that for me is an essential part of the spiritual life – it’s not so much a restless curiosity – more of a compassionate sort of curiosity – a compassionate curiosity that is willing to turn inwards and ask searching questions of myself, prepared to turn to another and engage in gentle enquiry that asks someone to say more about what is going on for them. It’s the kind of curiosity that notices things – like stars in the sky, like falling leaves, the behaviour of an animal – be that a much loved pet in our home or a bird that settles on a nearby fence. We tend to live our lives as though things will proceed much as they always have done and yet part of us knows the truth – that in reality we don’t have a clue what is going to happen next. We know that the path of life can turn in an instant.
Robert Fulghum puts it clearly when he writes that, “Surprise is the core of existence. It’s true. You never really know what’s coming next.”
Perhaps the writers of all those cautionary tales we heard earlier on, that warned of the dangers of curiosity, were in some way trying to protect humanity from this oft-times painful reality of an uncertain world. Yet hopefully no amount of warning can fully dampen our exploring spirits – the spirit in us that wants to know more – about ourselves, about one another and about, not just our world but, the universe itself.
Let us be brave and compassionate explorers, filled with a compassionate curiosity, and never too afraid to ask ‘why’?
Rev. Sarah Tinker
Sermon – 14th October 2012