Who

I'll tell you a story. It's only the memory of a question and about where the question first hit me. I was in college. It was a friday evening in the middle of December, most of the students had travelled home. I was sitting there having a drink and a smoke and it dawned on me that there was an ultimate question: What is the meaning of life? For a moment, I actually considered the possibility that i was the first one ever to have asked it.

My friends had reached identical conclusions for themselves. The same question apparently teased everyone. It could take many forms: What am I doing here? What am I supposed to be doing here? Why am I able to ask this question? Why am I unable to answer it?

The Kabbalists say that the ultimate question is simply "who?" I've asked these questions over and over since then. I suppose that one of the main reasons I'm a Pastor is because Pastor's have permission to be with people during the most transformative moments of their lives and are even expected to help them make those moments coherent and meaningful. I'm not sure I have a responsibility to have the right answers, but have increasingly learned it's about asking the questions that allow another to hear the echoes of the larger questions right there in the midst of the ordinary.