Curiosity May Have Killed the Cat, But it Didn’t Kill the Dog, it Gave it Life

A few months ago I read the curious story of Bobi, the oldest recorded living dog. He was a purebred Rafiro do Alentejo, a breed of Portuguese farm dog. Sadly Bobi died this week aged 31 years and 165 days. They say that there are 7 dog years for every human year. So, if Bobi were human that would have made him about 220 years old.

According to BBC News“Bobi lived his whole life with the Costa family in the village of Conqueiros, near Portugal's west coast, after being born with three siblings in an outbuilding. Leonel Costa, who was eight years old at the time, said his parents had too many animals and had to put the puppies down, but Bobi escaped. Mr Costa and his brothers kept the dog's existence a secret from their parents until he was eventually discovered and became part of the family, who fed him the same food they eat…Mr Costa said..that Bobi had enjoyed a relatively trouble-free life and thought the secret to his longevity was the "calm, peaceful environment" he lived in…Bobi was not the only dog owned by the Mr Costa to live a long life. Bobi's mother lived to the age of 18 while another of the family's dogs died at the age of 22.”

Now as you know I have become a bit of a dog enthusiast. I am curious about every dog I ever meet. One of my favourite games is to attempt to work out the mix of some of the dogs I meet on the street and or in the park. It seems to be my favourite topic of conversation at the moment and I am usually right. I have got very good at it.

Oh curiouser and curiouser…One thing else I am curious about is what empassions others, what fires them up.

I have found myself in some quite animated conversations recently. Not least last Sunday following the service. I have never known coffee time to be more animated and the conversation has continued since. This has animated me even more. I have loved hearing the perspective of others. This is another curiosity of mine, to hear and understand where others are coming from. How they interact with life and their own personal spiritual beliefs and explorations.

I was talking about this with Janine on Monday morning. As I stated last weeks I am enjoying these conversations as it is helping me reflect on my own ministerial journey, another curiosity in itself. I am also very interested in Janine, where she is coming from and wondering where she will end up. I am very curious about this.

Now one of my other curiosities is what makes others tick, what they are curious about themselves. I was recently talking with a friend who told me when he was growing up he use to feel frustrated that people were not as curious about things as he was. I listened to him and what I realised was that this was not entirely true. My friend is very scientifically minded and he was and is very curious about how things work etc. I think what he didn’t realise is that it wasn’t that people aren’t curious it is just that their curiosities are in other areas of life. Now I can sometimes feel as baffled as my friend as to the things that hold the interest of others. It is wrong to suggest that they lack curiosity though, it’s just that they are fascinated by different things. Human diversity operates on a multitude of levels. This is another fascinating curiosity by the way.

Watching Molly is a curiosity and it is fascinating to see what she is curious about. I kind of think that curiosity in many ways is the whole energy of life. How we are curious, what sparks our curiosity. Maybe curiosity is the very essence of the Divine spark within us. Curiosity is perhaps the holiest of acts. We should practice Holy Curiosity. Barbara Bartocci, in “Grace on the Go” said: “What a wonderful combination of words! Holy curiosity. Our ability to wonder, to inquire, to welcome what is new, and to keep our minds open to truth when and where we find it — surely this is one of the most miraculous qualities that human beings possess. Maintain an open mind today. Ask questions. Acknowledge truth when you find it. Pray to be led by holy curiosity.”

To me curiosity is a characteristic of the Divine spark within us, it is an antidote to cynicism. Curiosity is a risk, as it makes us vulnerable and open. Yes, to disappointment at times, but also to wonder and spontaneous delight. Curiosity gives us the courage to discover almost unimaginable aspects of ourselves and others. It is a doorway to beginning to live those questions of life. Curiosity is our most natural state. It is something innate within us, we should never dampen it down in others. It matters not what it is either, we are all different, thus our curiosity is bound to be so. Sadly, too often this happens. Sometimes we do this to ourselves as we feel we have gained all that we need to know, we lose the natural curiosity of a child and or puppy. They say that curiosity killed the cat. This maybe true, but I reckon that it probably saved the dog, it certainly brought it to life. Maybe it is the secret to a long life, to maintain and keep on developing curiosity.

I have been thinking about my friend and his apparent frustration at what he saw as the lack of curiosity in others. What he failed to see was that people are curious about different things. He wanted to know how things work. People like me are interested in how things work, but not inanimate things. My fascination is people. I have always been curious about such things. I know others who are similar who are always inquiring after others. They are the people who when they ask how you are, really want to know. They want to accompany people. In many ways this is one aspect of ministry, pastoral ministry at least. It brings to mind Jesus and the two men on “The Road to Emmaus from (Luke chapter 24v 17) and his question: 'What are you discussing together as you walk along?'

I have always been fascinated by people’s conversations. The way they interact with others and the questions they ask about life, all life, all aspects of life. The ordinary the everyday. I am no different to dogs, to Molly, I am always sniffing things out, just in a different kind of way. This is my curiosity, my Holy curiosity. Is there anything more holy than being attentive to life, to this life, to real life. As Henri Nouwen observed, 'The spiritual life is not a life before, after, or beyond our everyday existence. No, the spiritual life can only be real when it is lived in the midst of the pains and joys of the here and now.' The spiritual life must be a curious life. It is Holy curiosity.

Now it may surprise you to hear that it was Albert Einstein who coined the phrase “Holy Curiosity”. We have a poster stating the following quote from him in the small schoolroom:

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.”

Now it seems to me that “Holy Curiosity ought to be central to the spiritual life. Sadly this has not always been the case; sadly the impulse to shut down curiosity has been at the core of religious belief. That said it is not only to be found in religion, it is there in philosophy, story and myth. An example is those old fairy stories we were taught as a child, or old sayings like “curiosity killed the cat”. Just think of what happened to the curious in fairy tales, things didn’t turn out well at all. Snow White opens the door to an old woman who’s really a murderous queen in disguise, and pays for this mistake with her life, she eats the poisoned apple. Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks, and Sleeping Beauty all narrowly escape this same fate. Strangely we are taught from an early age of the dangers of curiosity. It is there in the second book of Genesis. Adam and Eve are told not to eat of the tree of knowledge, but curiosity gets the better of them and they are cast out of paradise. Isn’t this the story of Snow White.

Each Sunday in worship though we enter into curiosity into search, seeking something more, a deeper understanding and experience. This means exploring the darker aspects at times, as we did last Sunday, in response so many seemed so engaged, how this delighted me. This to me is the essence of the Unitarian tradition. We are a religion for the curious. It is there right at the beginning of our history in the midst of the reformation,a response in so many ways to a restrictive form of Calvinistic Protestantism that quashed curiosity. John Calvin himself said that the most direct path to finding God is not to “attempt with presumptuous curiosity to pry into his essence, which is rather to be adored than minutely discussed.” I shudder to think what he would have thought about last Sunday’s worship and the conversations that followed. Ours is a religion for the curious, for those who want to explore. The God I know comes to life through curiosity. This si living spiritually alive.

So, while curiosity may have killed the cat, it gave life to the dog. So, I say lets all we like that old Portuguese farm dog Bobi and live long and wonderful lives. Let’s keep our senses open and live by “Holy Curiosity”. For surely this is the answer to the question of life, how then shall I live.

Let’s live by “Holy Curiosity”

I’m going to end with that question, in the form of a wonderful poem by the wonderfully curious Mary Oliver, who loved dogs and their wonderful curiosity.

“When Death Comes”

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

Mary Oliver

Below is a video devotion based on the material in this "blogspot"

Becoming Juicy People with Holy Curiosity

I was out the other night with friends enjoying a meal. It was one of our numbers fortieth birthday. We had a wonderful evening full of life, full of joy, full of laughter and of course full of food. We did get some funny looks from others in the restaurant due primarily to the joy and abandon in our gathering. I enjoy similar experiences on a Tuesday morning with the group of folk I go for coffee with after our early morning mediation. We fill Café Nero with the joy of living, despite its very real troubles. Oh how I love the company of juicy people.

Juicy people brings to mind the following lines from Walt Whitman’s “The body electric”, the fourth stanza:

I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment, what is this then?
I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.

There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well,
All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.

Rick Heffern in his book “Daybreak Within: Living in a Sacred World” writes about the twelfth century Christian mystic Hildegard of Bingen, she suggested that the key to living spiritually alive is to become “juicy people”. That such people need to be filled with wonder and curiosity and live with lusty appetites and high spirits and that they embrace life liberty and they pursue happiness “with a burly grinning bear hug”, It is suggested that to “be juicy is to be: a fearlessly joyous optimist, a troublemaker tirelessly afflicting the comfortable, a passionate lover of good talk and tasty food, an an anonymous prophet hovering over the cosmological riddle, a frequent violator of the ordinance against indecent exposure of the heart, and a guerilla in the insurrection against Dream Molesters everywhere."

When I think about my friends from the other night and the ones I share meditation and morning coffee with, they are juicy people. They are filled with a enthusiasm for life, they hunger and thirst for a life filled with passion, they seek joy in each moment, despite the real troubles that we all face. They see a goodness in life. They proclaim that all is well, not perfect, but well. They bring alive the juiciness of human being.

There is nothing like eating with and simply sharing the company of juicy people. When you do there is a richness to the company, you experience deep conversation, deep laughter and a joy that no one can take away. They experience the goodness of life and want to share it with you, to welcome you to their table of love and joy. In such company you are challenged to grow, but not grow alone. It is about raising one another up and aiming high, it is not about playing it safe. When I reflect on the near eight years I have meditated with these people I have witnessed deep transformation in our shared human being. Do you know what I think that this has come as much from the hour we have shared in Café Nero as the hour we spent in meditation and sharing. Groovy times with “juicy people”.

Now “Juicy people” are by their nature curious. They are spiritual seekers. They do not merely ask questions, but attempt to live them, to bring them to life. Curiosity always begins with a question. Just think of every two and three year old you have ever known, or every puppy you have ever known for that matter, is there anything more “juicy”? They are full of curiosity and ask questions of everything. Think about the little ones you have known, everything you ever tell them ends with that frustrating one word response “Why?” You can’t take your eyes off them either, their fingers and or noses are into everything.

Now as we get older we lose a little of this, perhaps because we start to realise that there will always be questions that we cannot fully answer. Yes we have gained experience but we do not know everything and I don’t suppose we ever will.

This brings to mind a wonderful little story about an encounter with a Zen master and his student:

“What happens when we die?” asks the student.
“I don’t know,” is the answer.
“But you’re a Zen master!”
“True. Quite true. But I am not a dead Zen master.”

So yes there are many questions that no matter how well we live them we will never be able to fully answer.

Now there are other groups of “juicy people” that I have the pleasure of sharing time with. One is the monthly “Living the Questions” group. An ever changing group by the way. A group which each month explores and attempts to bring to life the questions of truly living. It has been a joy and blessing to be part of this these last few years, it has certainly transformed me and I have witnessed this in others too. The inspiration for the group’s title come from a favourite passage from “Letters to a Young Poet” by Rainer Maria Rilke. In it the poet Rilke writes a letter to his protégé the 19 year old cadet and budding poet Franz Xaver Kappus making a beautiful case for the importance of not merely asking questions, but living them, while embracing uncertainty and allowing for the development of intuition.

Rilke writes:

“I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

This to me is the essence of living the “juicy” life, to curious living.

Now I’m not sure that our day and age encourages “juiciness” in people; I’m not overly sure it encourages doubt and curiosity, to live the questions. It seems today that folk are encouraged to have an opinion, voice it with conviction and voice it again and again and again. This to me seems to be a faithless form of living, where people cling desperately to partisanship. Certainly this is the case when you look at public dialogue. It would appear that to live juicily, with curiosity is to let go of certainty, now this seems out of step with our current age. Well that maybe, but surely curiosity is the key to faithful living as it allows the transformation of our humanity, this kind of faithful uncertainty requires courage.

Victoria Safford describes what I mean beautifully in her meditation “Open Eyes”. She states:

“The awakened eye is a conscious eye, a willful eye, and brave, because to see things as they are, each in its own truth, will make you very vulnerable.”

This unselfconscious vulnerability, this openness is how the curious, very young live. They see without preconceived notions. They see with open eyes and then ask why, why, why, why?

Now of course we cannot look with children;s eyes, we have to look with adult eyes and this to me is how we begin to live the questions, to become what Heldegard of Bigen suggests as living “juicy lives”. I suspect that Safford captures this beautifully when she writes that “To see, simply to look and to see, is an ethical act and intentional choice; to see, with open eyes, is a spiritual practice and thus a risk, for it can open you to ways of knowing the world and loving it that will lead to inevitable consequences.”

We adults can do what those young children do but with ethical eyes looking out at the world and acting in the world as adults. Through this we begin to be transformed as we live with this curiosity and begin to act differently in the world.

This is where transformation begins. Transformation of ourselves and our world as we begin to live the questions, as we become juicy people as we develop what Albert Einstein called “Holy Curiosity.” Which is to live with the spirit of humility, with an open mind, an open heart and open hands, to search out truth and to live with your eyes wide open in joyful wonder.

I’m going to end this "blogspot" with Einstein’s quote on “Holy Curiosity”. He said:

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.”

So let’s live with “holy curiosity”, living the questions as ever more juicy people.