Awakening Curiosity
an invitation into wonder, openness, and the transformative power of asking deeper questions
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Greetings of peace, Beloved Sibling,
It’s been a minute, hasn’t it?!?
For the past two and a half months, I have been focusing on my mother’s health, day-to-day needs, and her relocation. While I have worked to remain as mindful, [self]reflective, and contemplative as I can, I have not been able to commit many of those fruits to writing. However, last Sunday I had the privilege of co-leading another service [via Zoom] at UU Fellowship in Chico.
My planning partner, Merrily Stover, and I researched the concept of awakening curiosity, which is as fun as it is broad. We decided to issue an invitation (in)to wonder, openness, and the transformative power of asking deeper questions. Together, we reflected on how rigid certainty can narrow our world, while curiosity can awaken us to new possibilities, deeper connection, and the ever-unfolding nature of life itself. As usual, I drew heavily on Buddhist wisdom, contemplative Christian practices, and lived experience. The primary encouragement was to cultivate a “beginner’s mind” — known in Zen Buddhism as Shoshin — a spacious and compassionate way of being present to ourselves, one another, and the mystery of this moment. Shoshin was popularized outside of Japan by Shunryū Suzuki’s 1970 book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.
I have included a few liturgical elements below, and my reflection is offered in two parts. I hope these efforts spark your curiosity and may you remain on the ever-unfolding path of discovering and be+coming.
Call to Worship:
Come, let us gather in this moment, bringing with us our questions, our hopes, our uncertainties, and our wonder.
In a world that often urges us toward quick answers and rigid certainty, may we remember the sacred courage of curiosity.
May we enter this space with “beginner’s minds”— open to learning, open to surprise, open to sensing what we have yet to sense.
Let us be curious about ourselves: the stories we tell, the assumptions we carry, the possibilities waiting to emerge.
Let us be curious about one another: listening deeply, meeting differences with compassion, discovering the gifts that each person brings.
And let us be curious about life itself— this unfolding mystery that exceeds our understanding, yet continually invites our participation.
May wonder awaken us. May openness transform us. May curiosity guide us more deeply into connection, wisdom, and love.
Let us worship, let us celebrate, let us play together.
Part 1: Awakening Curiosity
rev alê [Alexandre da Silva Souto]
Curiosity begins with a simple recognition:
there is always more to learn.
Many of us move through life searching for certainty.
We want clear answers,
firm conclusions,
and stable ground beneath our feet.
Yet some of life’s most meaningful discoveries
arrive not when we think we know,
but when we become willing to wonder.
“I have no special talents.
I am only passionately curious.”
~Albert Einstein
Curiosity invites us into
a different relationship with the world.
Instead of asking,
“How can I be right?”
it asks,
“What might I be missing?”
Instead of closing a conversation,
it opens one.
Instead of drawing hard boundaries
between ourselves and others,
it creates space for listening,
learning, and connection.
“Children, be curious.
Nothing is worse (I know it) than when curiosity stops.
Nothing is more repressive than the repression of curiosity.
Curiosity begets love. It weds us to the world.
It’s part of our perverse,
madcap love for this impossible planet we inhabit.
People die when curiosity goes.”
~Graham Swift
Curiosity does not require expertise.
It requires humility.
It asks us to approach life with a beginner’s mind—
to recognize that every person carries a story
we do not fully know,
every challenge contains dimensions we have not yet seen,
and every moment may hold
possibilities beyond our expectations.
“Millions saw the apple fall,
but Newton was the only one who asked why.”
~Bernard Baruch
In a culture that often rewards certainty and quick judgment,
curiosity can become a spiritual practice.
It helps us remain open to growth,
compassionate toward difference,
and attentive to the mystery that surrounds us.
Curiosity does not require expertise.
It requires humility.
Curiosity does not require expertise.
It requires humility.
Curiosity does not require expertise.
It requires humility.
Reading:
Presence
Excerpted from: The Ordinary Magic of Meditation
by John Welwood, page 172.
Whenever we open into the unknown, there’s a tendency to close that experience down or put it in a box. We may open in a wonderful new way with someone we love, but this may be scary, so the next moment we do something that shuts it down.
We’re there one moment with a piece of music and the next moment we’re distracted.
Or we try to recapture that moment—which is another way of shutting it down.
Instead of trying not to shut down, all we can do is to notice how we do this, again and again, and see what it feels like.
When we bring unconditional presence to the moment of not being present, this brings us back to the present.
Part 2: Curiosity and the Courage of Not Knowing
rev alê [Alexandre da Silva Souto]
If curiosity begins with humility,
it deepens through our willingness to live with uncertainty.
Pema Chödrön writes,
“Letting there be room for not knowing
is the most important thing of all.”
Those words run counter to much of what we are taught.
We are encouraged to seek certainty,
mastery, and control.
The delusion of Control.
Absolute Control is deceitful poison.
Control is a Twin to obsession.
We want to know how things will turn out.
We want assurance that our choices are correct,
that our relationships are secure,
and that the future will unfold according to plan.
Yet one of the central insights of Buddhist practice is that
life is inherently uncertain.
Everything is changing.
Everything is unfolding.
Nothing remains fixed for very long.
Life is Impermanence.
The challenge is not that life is uncertain;
Impermanent
Impermanent
the challenge is…
we often resist its uncertainty.
We resist the curiosity about what truly is
and What is in the process of becoming.
The ever-unfolding Becoming.
“I think, at a child’s birth,
if a mother could ask a fairy godmother
to endow it with the most useful gift,
that gift would be curiosity.”
~Eleanor Roosevelt
When we cling to certainty,
we narrow our field of vision.
We become attached to particular outcomes,
particular identities,
particular stories about how things should be.
But as Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki reminds us,
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities.
In the expert’s mind there are few.”
The beginner’s mind is not a lack of knowledge.
It is a posture of openness.
It is the willingness to meet each moment
without assuming we already know what it means.
Assuming lacks humility!
This openness becomes especially important
when we encounter anxiety.
Anxiety asks,
“What if everything goes wrong?”
Anxiety seeks guarantees.
It seeks control.
But as Rev. Sara Goodman suggests,
the opposite of anxiety is not confidence;
it is curiosity.
Curiosity asks a different question:
“I wonder what could happen?”
Curiosity shifts us from fear toward exploration,
from contraction toward openness.
Perhaps that is why Pema Chödrön offers
what she calls the best spiritual instruction:
to wake up in the morning and simply say,
“I wonder what’s going to happen today.”
Not because we expect every day to be easy,
but because wonder allows us to meet life as it is
rather than as we demand it to be.
What if we were to try asking ourselves every morning this week…
“I wonder what’s going to happen today?”
“Socrates told us, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
I think he’s calling for curiosity, more than knowledge.
In every human society at all times and at all levels,
the curious are at the leading edge.”
~Roger Ebert
Curiosity also transforms our relationships.
When we believe we already know someone,
we stop listening.
We reduce them to a role,
a memory, or an assumption.
But when we approach another person with genuine curiosity,
we discover that they are still unfolding—
and so are we.
We become more attentive,
more compassionate,
and more capable of seeing one another clearly.
The same is true for circumstances…
When we approach a circumstance as it is already fixed and predetermined
We reduce that situation to something that may seem to be in our control
because we already decided what it is,
but we prevented it from being what it really is
and loose the ability to discover what is trying to unfold.
Krista Tippett writes that
we are shaped as much by the quality of our questions
as by the answers we have to give.
Perhaps the spiritual life is not primarily about
arriving at certainty.
Perhaps it is about learning to ask deeper questions.
Questions that open rather than close.
Questions that invite wonder rather than demand conclusions.
And so perhaps awakening curiosity is
really an invitation to trust the unfolding.
To make room for not knowing.
To meet this moment with a beginner’s mind and an open heart.
For when we loosen our grip on certainty,
we often discover something unexpected:
beneath the discomfort of not knowing lies a deeper freedom—
the freedom to wonder,
to learn, to connect,
and to participate more fully in the mystery of being alive.
“Letting there be room for not knowing
is the most important thing of all.”
~Pema Chödrön
Benediction:
rev alê [Alexandre da Silva Souto]
Living a Curious Life
A curious life is not a life of certainty.
It is a life of attention.We often imagine life as a road
leading toward a destination.
But perhaps life is more like a garden—
something to wander through
with awareness and wonder.
The question becomes less,
“Have I arrived?” and more,
“What am I noticing?”Every day offers an invitation to begin again. To greet the morning with openness rather than assumption. To remain available to surprise, beauty, learning, and connection.
The sacred gift of curiosity is not that it gives us better answers. It is that it teaches us how to be fully alive to the mystery, beauty, and possibilities that are already here.
May we meet this day, this community, and this unfolding life with open hearts, open minds, and a spirit of wonder.
And now we take our leave.
Before we gather here again—
may each of us bring happiness into another’s life;
may we each be surprised by the gifts that surround us;
may each of us be enlivened by constant curiosity —
And may we remain together in spirit,
‘til the hour we meet again.
~Barbara Cheatham
Adapted transliteration of The Lord’s Prayer
from Aramaic by Nabu [New Earth Builder]
O breathing life of all existence,
you who dwell in the dimension of light and vibration
from which all things emerge.
May the sacred vibration
through which you organize reality
be recognized and honored in everything we do.
May the sacred queendom —
the divine feminine creative principle —
fully express itself in earthly reality
as it does in the dimension of light.
May your loving desire for
the full expression of divine consciousness
be realized in earthly reality
as fully as it is in the dimension of light.
Provide us today with the nourishment —
physical, emotional, and spiritual —
that we genuinely need for our full flourishing.
Release us from the energetic knots
we have accumulated
as we release others from the grip of our resentment toward them.
Do not let us become lost in the illusion of separation from you,
but free us from the immature consciousness
that arises from that forgetting.
For the divine feminine creative principle,
the power of life,
and the radiance of all existence belong to you
through all cycles of time.
So be it —
grounded in [us],
expressed through [us],
made real in the world through
[our] conscious participation.
Here is a link to a recording of the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic.
“Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.”
~ James Stephens
Here is a link to a partial recording of the service in case you’re a visual learner like me.