Question: How then shall we live?

This small question has become for me the cornerstone of prayer. When I am quietest and most still, this is the question that rises to the surface of my נפשׁ, time after time. Wrapped in it are many things, micro and macro, immediate and far away, mundane and sacred, hopeful and skeptical and honest. The question contains for me both a recognition and a plea: a recognition of the need for a stopping point, or at least a way point, in the stream of questions and perspectives and information that can flood the mind, and a plea for assistance to make sense of it all, in a way that is practical, tangible, constructive. 

I do not believe anyone would argue that the hermetic and insular worldviews that make us feel "elect" and "saved" have been compromised - mercifully - by the access to information we enjoy today. It becomes increasingly impossible to remain unexposed to compelling perspectives that at very deep levels challenge your own. This is a good thing. Very good. But dangerous. 

Starting points and philosophic assumptions are like a compass, leading to more or less foregone destinations. If, for example, you accept a priori the inspiration of a sacred text - recognizing even that "inspiration" is a concept fraught with umpteen facets - if you assume this as your starting point, you will probably land at certain end points. Exegetical debate is really a secondary discipline; the real battle ground of ideas is located where words are small and ideas are large: yes and no, death and life, man and woman, hope and nothingness, divine and human, plan and random, bound and unbounded, matter and soul. 

So I pray "How then shall we live?" or the imperative "Teach me how to live" because while I see in my bookshelf a swirling temple of beauty and truth, I also recognize that I will become the sacrifice myself if I turn to it for ultimate answers. There must be a way to live that is informed by, but not sourced by, knowledge. A way beyond knowledge. And this is what I am after. At stake is nothing short of everything: how to do relationship, how to choose and carry out profession, what of education, how to relate to material things and food, what lessons to draw from history, which influences are worth having, what imperatives are laid upon me by the coincidence of American birth, what it means to live radically, what it means to live in balance, and how to be patient, with self and others and world. 

It is for me a quivering question. And somehow just asking it, in the best stillness I am capable of, feels like the beginning of a satisfying answer, feels like harnessing its energy in the right direction.