Take Heart in Not Knowing
A throwback...(to hopefully offer some grounding)
As you may be able to tell by my inconsistent postings, I’m struggling with my routine. This summer, I’m doing lots of work for the Peace Education Center while also struggling with what I can do to disrupt (dismantle? destroy?) our fascist government while simultaneously being so angry-sad at the genocide in Palestine…oof, I often have nothing to share.
So, I went into my sermon archive, which I do from time to time when I need a teaching for myself. And today, I’d like to share this old gem from 2019. It is centered around my favorite grounding principle: Not Knowing.
In 2009, I got divorced. While initially devastating, I can now state unequivocally that my divorce was the best thing to happen to me. Through that painful experience, I rediscovered myself and began to live the life that I had always wanted to live. My “re-birth” was made easier by a spiritually-like-minded therapist who helped me heal and transition into my life as a 40-year-old single mother. She—who knew first-hand what I was dealing with—also encouraged me to attend Al-Anon meetings. I found solace in the meetings, and sometimes they were the highlight of my day; the only reason I made it through some days. I liked engaging with the twelve steps, and I also liked the famous slogans AA-related groups are known for (including: One Day at A Time; This Too Shall Pass; Turn it Over; and I Came, I Came to, I came to believe…). During one meeting, someone shared the expression “Take Heart in Not Knowing”. I had never heard that before. I don’t think it is/was an official “friend of Bill W” slogan, but I liked it. From that afternoon on, those five words became a guiding force in my life.
As a person seemingly perpetually in formation, these words help me find my center amidst my struggles with fear and ambiguity. For many years, I’d feel overwhelmed about money or my time or my health or if Rafaella and I were going to be alright...you know that cycle where your head just spins with questions and really really does not want to live with uncertainty...and I’d start to freak out (or totally freak out) and then I’d look up at my desk in my bedroom, where I had plastered in rather large letters “Take Heart in Not Knowing”. And, I’d stop...and ponder...and breathe...and chill the hell out. The idea that I could “take heart” in something as simple and obvious as “not knowing” was something I could believe in. I could accept the concept and, in doing so, totally shift my mode of thinking and being. (I liked the phrase so much that I added it to the vocalese I wrote for Miles Davis’ solo on “Someday My Prince Will Come”!) And in that process of living with that phrase, I’d remember a related saying attributed to Buddhism: “Relax, nothing is under control!”
And that’s what makes that phrase so interesting to me. I, like many of you perhaps, just want things to go as planned. We want the knowledge and security that things are okay, that the things we want or need will be there, and that the visions we had of our lives will come true, and that is that. We want everything to be under control. Until something goes wrong. Our heart breaks, someone we love gets sick, the job we wanted falls through, we find ourselves lost and afraid and wondering….and then our impulse for control kicks in and we make ourselves even more anxious and fearful because ….“dammit, why can’t things just go the way I want them to!!” Look at the sign: Take Heart in Not Knowing. C’mon...say it to yourself. Now say it again….and again…
But, of course, it didn’t always work. I had moments when I screamed at the universe, “Just tell me what I’m supposed to be doing already!” All the questions I carried, about what to do with my life and work, if I’d find love, how to handle certain situations, I sometimes just wanted a concrete answer. I just wanted someone - anyone - to say, “Alright, kid, here’s what’s gonna happen….” I went on a deep quest for God so that maybe God could just give me the answers. But even while I was in the thick of thinking that way, I knew it was unrealistic. The urge for answers was largely about control - I just wanted to be in control of my life….but the more I thought about it, the more I realized how impossible that expectation was.
It’s a vicious cycle, actually, and reminds me of Verse 76 of The Tao Te Ching, which says:
Humans are born soft and supple;
dead, they are stiff and hard.
Plants are born tender and pliant;
dead, they are brittle and dry.
Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible
is a disciple of death.
Whoever is soft and yielding
is a disciple of life.
The hard and stiff will be broken.
The soft and supple will prevail.
Being soft and supple and flexible will help us prevail. So, basically, the idea of “Take Heart in Not Knowing” is a REAL leap of faith. Because a) it is asking us to decide to NOT be in control, and b) it is asking us to go against this natural inclination to get stiff and rigid and to push. This leap of faith is also a tool, a tool that I used to learn to relinquish control, to learn to be more soft and supple, to learn to let things happen as they are meant to be happening.
Now, I do certainly believe we can “make things happen”. I’m all for thinking positively, practicing creative visualization, working toward a dream or goal. And I do think we have to be proactive about things that cause us pain: we must visit doctors, see our therapists, feed our spirits. But we cannot force things to happen. Because pushing—oh, and I know this well, because I used to push and push—often makes things break. Ourselves included. Think of a piece of reed or a stalk of a plant or a cold stiff muscle. Something stiff and rigid is quite easy to break. You can snap a twig, just like that. But it is much harder to tear apart a fresh green stalk or branch, or to injure a warm stretched muscle. When we focus too much on control, or fear or anxiety or the future, and we become fixated or forceful or rigid, we are setting ourselves up for pain.
On the other hand, ‘not knowing’ invites us into the space of being soft and supple; the space that allows us to go with the flow of things, and ultimately, live more fully in the present.
Pema Chodron reminds us that “Even if now is going really well--we have good health and we’ve met the person of our dreams, or we just had a child or got the job we wanted--nevertheless, there’s a deep tendency always to think about how it’s going to be later. We don’t quite give ourselves full credit for who we are in the present.”
And being in the present can be the best outcome of Take Heart in Now Knowing. If the not knowing pulls us out of the cycle of control and worrying about the future or the past, we can enjoy the ‘right now’. Even if it is not what we really want. Or is not ideal. Or is filled with suffering. If we remember what the Buddha taught about the roots of suffering, we will recall that grasping - or attachment - is a cause. So when we focus too much on control, we cause our own suffering.
While I was going through the worst of times, I relied heavily on Melody Beattie’s book “The Language of Letting Go”. In preparing this sermon, I flipped the old book open. And as fate or chance (your choice) would have it, here is the reading for December 7th:
“There are times when we simply do not know what to do, or where to go, next. Sometimes these periods are brief, sometimes lingering. We can get through these times. We can rely on our program and the disciplines of recovery. We can cope by using our faith, other people, and our resources. Accept uncertainty. We do not always have to know what to do or where to go next. We do not always have clear direction. Refusing to accept the inaction and limbo makes things worse. It is okay to temporarily be without direction. Say “I don’t know”, and be comfortable with that. We do not have to try to force wisdom, knowledge, or clarity when there is none.”
And that’s the other empowering thing hidden in Take Heart in Not Knowing: the journey is the goal. When we let go and relinquish control—and for me that means letting go of it completely, but for others it means handing it over to a higher power—we actually do begin to see the world differently. We treat ourselves and one another differently. I know I’m gentler to myself. I’m kinder to those around me. I have more patience and warmth to give. So think about what it might be like to live into this potentially uncomfortable and uncertain space of ‘not knowing’...will you give it a try?
I do want to throw one caveat into the mix, though. I don’t think “Take Heart in Not Knowing” is an invitation to become blasé or careless, especially when it comes to Big Issues. Meaning, when children die in US concentration camps*, we cannot live with the “not knowing”. We know it is wrong, and we are called to act. There is no moral or ethical grey area there. We are not allowed to throw our hands up and say “que sera sera”. Bad things, wrong things, violent things, need to be addressed. How we are called to address them is where we can listen to the space created when we focus on our journey.
*Updated for 2025, kids/everyone being starved to death in Palestine or shot by IOF soldiers when seeking food, activists being rounded up by the US Gestapo or kicked out of University, masked ICE thugs “disappearing” brown people and citizens, the planet reaching record high temperatures, oh, how the list goes on…