To Have an Interrogative Soul
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Pastor Bob Henry
July 31, 2022
Psalm 26:2 (The Voice):
Put me on trial and examine me, O Eternal One! Search me through and through—from my deepest longings to every thought that crosses my mind.
Last Sunday morning, I was at home still feeling horrible from whatever bug I had caught at the Yearly Meeting Sessions. After joining the Zoom for morning worship, I decided to take a brief nap, since I had not slept much the night before.
When I awoke, I did not feel like reading or writing, so I began flipping through the TV channels. Most Sundays, I do not watch TV around the noon hour - because I do not get home until 2 or 3pm after worship, fellowship, and lunch.
Soon I came across the OWN Channel and airing that morning was a Special Super Soul Sunday hosted by Oprah Winfrey. On many occasions I have watched Super Soul Sunday where Oprah has interviewed many of the people, I have found helpful in my own spiritual journey – from Richard Rohr and Rob Bell to Elizabeth Gilbert and Marianne Williamson. This special, last Sunday was a “Best Of” show based around a set of queries Oprah asks each of her guests.
I found the Super Soul Sunday special almost Quakerly in nature because of its focus on queries. Listening to different people respond about everything from what sustains them during difficult times, to what it means to be spiritual. Close to the end of the special, after many great answers and deep thoughts from some of the greatest thinkers today were shared, Oprah revealed a query that she once received that literally altered her world. A query that she said stopped her in her tracks.
The query was presented to Oprah at the end of a live television interview with the famous film critic, Gene Siskel. Most of us probably remember “At the Movies” with Siskel and Ebert where they would give their famous thumbs up and thumbs down sending movies on to box-office success or failure. At the time, Oprah was concluding the live interview with Siskel about her upcoming movie, “Beloved,” when, to her surprise, he asked Oprah one last question. He said, “Tell me, what do you know for sure?”
Oprah recalled that the question completely threw her. She stumbled to answer it and even felt embarrassed on live television. She says she went home and for two full days could not stop pondering the query.
What do you know for sure?
The Super Soul Sunday special I was watching took several minutes showing her guests wrestling with that query. I quickly grabbed a piece of paper and wrote it down, “What do you know for sure?” For the rest of the afternoon, this query haunted me a bit.
I found myself going back through the years and reminiscing about all that I thought I knew for sure yet through experience and maturity have learned I don’t know at all.
I thought of all the things that the church I was raised in told me were for sure and how I don’t believe many of them anymore.
I even thought of the things that people I once trusted said were for sure that I have found were simply lies.
It was weird how a query that asks about what I know, has me quickly delving into the opposite and thinking about what all I really don’t know.
I think this is the power of good query. Probably the reason Quakers found them a central part of the Quaker Way. My friend, author and fellow Quaker minister Phil Gulley wrote this about Quakers and queries in his book, “Living the Quaker Way.” Phil says,
“The queries are a series of self-directed questions we employ to evaluate our emotional, spiritual, and relational health. Some of the queries are centuries old, others of them newer, speaking to more modern concerns and insights. They vary from one yearly meeting to another, though there is often overlap. Some friends write personal queries to aid in their own development. Many Friends use them as a guide in worship and daily reflection. Ideally, they are read one at a time, in an unhurried manner, allowing the question posed to be absorbed and considered. I have known some Friends to keep a single query at the center of attention for an entire year, allowing it to gradually modify their behavior in a desired direction…
Phil then concludes by saying,
“The point of the queries is simple: to encourage honest self-evaluation in light of our Quaker values and priorities. They focus scrutiny on ourselves and away from others. We do not use the queries to assess anyone’s life other than our own, casting light on those areas of our lives that we need to develop.”
For Oprah, that query presented to her by Gene Siskel became almost a life query – a query she has wrestled with for many years now and has continued to both ask herself and those she meets. In each issue of her magazine “O” she has a column where she writes what she is discovering about this query. This one query even helped prompt her to start the Super Soul Sundays interviews where most times she asks her guests to answer, “What do you know for sure?”
Did you know Oprah is following a tradition that goes back at least as far as Socrates and is considered the beginning of what we label critical thinking, today. Socrates had created a tradition to reflectively question common beliefs and explanations and include logic, reason, and experience in the process. Socrates maintained that for an individual to have a good life or a life that is worth living, they must be a critical questioner or must have an interrogative soul. I like that terminology – having an interrogative soul.
This was clearly at the heart of the matriarch of Quakerism, Margaret Fell’s spiritual journey. Listen to these strong words she once uttered about having an interrogative soul:
“Now, Friends, deal plainly with yourselves, and let the eternal Light search you, and try you, for the good of your souls. For this will deal plainly with you. It will rip you up, and lay you open, and make all manifest which lodges in you; the secret subtlety of the enemy of your souls, this eternal searcher and trier will make manifest. Therefore, all to this come, and by this be searched, and judged, and led and guided. For to this you must stand or fall.”
If you were wondering how long queries have been part of the Quaker faith, let me explain further. The first reference to queries among Quakers comes in George Fox’s journal in 1657. There he writes of queries that he posed to local professors and priests to challenge their spiritual insights. The first official recorded Quaker queries were used in the 1660’s as the Quaker movement began to be more organized: It was London Yearly Meeting that first used them to gauge the health of the Society and provide specific information about their leadings.
365 years later, each week we still offer queries to help explore the depths of our souls.
So, I ask you this morning some queries pertaining to this message:
As Quakers do you and I have interrogative souls?
Are we allowing the Spirit to use the queries presented to us to rip us up, lay us open, and make manifest what is truly in our souls?
Are we utilizing the gifts we have been given to critically think or are we simply blindly following those in leadership before us?
Do we spend more time scrutinizing others instead of first scrutinizing our own souls?
For me, that query Gene Siskel presented to Oprah Winfrey, “What do you know for sure?” had me interrogating my soul. For the last week, it has ripped me up, laid me open, and made me manifest and tap the deeper aspects of my soul. This one query has had me critically thinking more than I have in a while and it has challenged me to consider those I have been blindly following. And as I have begun to take the focus off what others are doing, or lacking, or misunderstanding, I am able to sense in a much deeper way the Spirit within me and how it is leading me to make difference in this world.
I might unpack some of what I am learning from answering this query in the coming weeks, but until then, all I ask of you is to join me this morning in simply pondering that one query, “What do you know for sure?” and seeing where the Spirit leads you. Let us now enter a time of waiting worship where we allow the Spirit to interrogate our souls and bring Light to our conditions.