Last night at dinner, we got into a conversation about music lyrics, and my husband and I were both telling stories of growing up in a time when we had to guess at half the lyrics. We had to listen over and over when a song came on the radio, or try to record it with our little tape recorder, if we happened to catch it at the very beginning. We had to talk it over with our friends and see what they thought. We would get what we thought were the right words, and sing along, until someone came along with a better interpretation that made more sense, and then we would sing those lyrics. Today, kids only have to know a line or two, a couple of words in order of a song, and they can Google the rest. Or, as Bean said, if we are listening to music on Pandora, there’s a button we can push and the lyrics are right there.
That made us think of all the other things that are at our fingertips today that we used to have to wonder about. When Scott and I were first dating, there was no social media. I got to sit around wondering about him, and fantasizing from the bits of information I had. I had to piece together things I knew from dozens of conversations to form what I could make out of his character, and daydream the rest, until more could be revealed. Which meant, until we could have more conversations.
Today, if people are curious about someone, they look them up online and can find out what they think, what bugs them, what they love, what they are hoping for. I feel sorry for people dating in the social media age. There is so little to wonder about.
Right now, I am finishing up a term at the local Junior College. I took a full load of twelve units to knock a bit more off of the chunk I have to finish to get my Bachelor’s degree. I am taking a World Religions class, and my Spiritual Autobiography is due tonight. I have been working on finalizing it for the last couple of weeks. And truth be told, I have been writing it all my life. My understanding of what I believe, and how I feel about God has been a source of wonder or frustration for most of my thinking life.
This morning, with the family conversation around the dinner table from last night still fresh in my head, I woke up realizing that there will never be any worry that we will know all we need to know about God. There will never be a day when we just have to Google something, and it’s all plainly spelled out for us. There will Always be more to wonder about, and that is about as exciting as Ice Cream to me this morning.
I feel sorry for anyone who knows for sure and has a pat answer sort of understanding about the things of God. Surely, there is more to it than what we can comprehend with our finite minds. And surely, our ability to form words cannot possibly do justice to the who and what all that there is to God.
The idea that fragments of wisdom may be gained through pondering or meditating on some facet that we have discovered, but that there are still vast universes left that we cannot yet fathom is infinitely exciting to me.
It was like I got a huge gift this morning. I was bemoaning the fact that there is so little to wonder about, and yet I have barely scratched the surface. Yes, if you looked at my bookshelves, you would see a lifetime of questioning, seeking, some frustration with organized religion, and all sorts of delving into the mystery of the divine. My reading has spanned all sorts of aspects, and there is still more to learn. How grand and glorious that we can never know the half of it.
Photo from here
Title is a reference to a song from Fiddler on the Roof