I write out the list of questions I’m pondering because seeing them on paper somehow makes my brain work better. These are questions without simple answers. No Google search or ChatGPT query is sufficient. I use these questions to help guide what I pick to read and study. They also become prayer matters when they stay on my mind and heart.
Partial list (does not include the quite personal and I choose to keep those confidential):
- What should wealthier seniors sacrifice for common good (beyond their families)?
- What is the best process to recover trust in institutions after that trust is eroded/destroyed?
- How will the Church respond to polyamory, polygamy, and reducing the age of consent?
- What is the best course of action for individuals when organizations become corrupted?
- What capabilities for students should we expect from schooling?
- How can the Western Canon become a stronger part of the foundations for adults who want to learn?
- What are the critical things I need to be teaching the next two generations of leaders?
- What should I do now to be better prepared for <family challenges I can see coming>?
- What are the secondary and tertiary consequences of ai tools in education, living wage employment, and social/political structures?
- Who in my sphere of influence needs more from me, and who less?
- What do I need to surrender today?
- There are growing and unstainable national, state, pension, corporate, family debt instabilities. What are the least bad options through this to a better future?
- Does it always require a crisis to change the status quo when the people with the power to change it are the same people who benefit from the status quo?
- Were we to get into an active war with a major adversary, what individual liberties are most important to protect?
- Where must we draw lines on gene editing?
- How can I best model “innocent as doves and wise as serpents”?
- In what ways do I need to reinvent my practices to continue to drive to excellence?
- Dear God, I know you do a thousand things at once, so what are you doing with <this situation>?
Have you written out your big questions? What are the key questions you’re exploring?
My friend MW recently recommended Psalm 11 to me.
In the Lord I take refuge;
how can you say to my soul,
“Flee like a bird to your mountain,
for behold, the wicked bend the bow;
they have fitted their arrow to the string
to shoot in the dark at the upright in heart;
if the foundations are destroyed,
what can the righteous do?”
The Lord is in his holy temple;
the Lord’s throne is in heaven;
his eyes see, his eyelids test the children of man.
When faced with awful and dreadful possibilities, the answer is “The Lord is in his holy temple.”
