The Beautiful Question

A beautiful question is the one we don’t know how to ask, yet it is as essential as breath itself. It lives beyond the words that get stuck in our throats and like a sunrise it moves our hearts before we speak. David Whyte, poet and author, says, “The ability to ask beautiful questions, often in very unbeautiful moments, is one of the great disciplines of a human life. And a beautiful question starts to shape your identity as much by asking it as it does by having it answered.” A beautiful question carefully disrobes our disbelief and despair and reveals an unspoken possibility. Like poetry it can leave us feeling naked, alive, and holy. 
 
I have lived through two pandemics. The other one commemorated the 35th anniversary of the AIDS Memorial Quilt this weekend. To mark the anniversary, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park held the largest display of the Quilt in several decades (3000 individual panels). I arrived in the morning as groups of people milled about the Robin Williams Meadow waiting for the sun to dry the dewy grass. A grid was mapped out in the field with bundles of fabric in the middle of each quadrant. The sun was soft and kind. Eventually groups of volunteers began to carefully unfold the precious packages, like origami in reverse, smoothing each crease and returning each bundle to its natural state. Each panel was stretched from north to south, and east to west, a silent testimony of names laid out in repose. Each 3x6-foot panel, about the size of a grave, is stitched together with eight others into a collage of colors and images. The entirety of the Quilt contains over 50,000 individual panels, weighing an estimated 54 tons, and representing over 110,000 people lost to AIDS. 

Photo credit: Jorg Fockele

​As I watched this exquisite unfolding of care, I thought about one of the anthems of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, “Seasons of Love” from the Broadway musical, Rent.

Five hundred, twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes
Five hundred, twenty-five thousand moments so dear
Five hundred, twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?
In daylights, in sunsets
In midnights, in cups of coffee
In inches, in miles
In laughter, in strife
In five hundred, twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes
How do you measure a year in a life?

In those early years of HIV/AIDS, the unbeautiful moment was not how to measure a year in a life but rather how to measure a life in just one year. Many of us were told we had a year. Too many only got a year. As it turned out my name didn’t make it onto the Quilt. I am one of the fortunate ones whose panel is still being sewn. And in this more recent pandemic, over a million people in the United States gone, COVID gave even less time to measure a life. Mom had two weeks. Both diseases have had so much suffering, isolation, blame and shame. A beautiful question is not pretty or easy. It shakes the ground with what is hiding in plain sight. “Seasons of Love” answers its own question with a beautiful question. 

How about love?
How about love?
Seasons of love

Recently one of my dear friends asked, “What if love were enough?” Love? I can hear the groans and see the eye rolls. It’s easy to become jaded. But perhaps this is not a problem with love, it’s a problem of our imagination. Sharon Salzberg in her book, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection, suggests that love is not just an emotion, it’s a skill. We don’t fall into real love. It’s a choice. It requires practice and intention. This kind of love is an audacious conversation with our dreams. How about love? What would that look like? “And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:13. What if we lived that? As I consider my seasons, love is always what has saved me. Perhaps we never have enough love. Perhaps love is always enough. 
 
How about love?