Love the Questions?!

Eugene Ionesco, a Romanian and French playwright, said: “It’s not the answer that enlightens, but the question.”

This is really hard to accept, because I want answers to these questions:

How can I feel safe?
Is there a deeper meaning to life?
Does God love me?
Is there a God?
What’s the purpose of my life?

I want answers. But I can’t have them.

Uncertainty is certainly uncomfortable, but, ’tis how it is. Better to be uncertain and uncomfortable than certain and ridiculous.

I have questions, and maybe, just maybe, they can help.

There’s a wonderful Rilke quote. I want you to really hear the message behind these words:

I would like to beg you to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart, and to love the questions themselves as though they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you wouldn’t be able to understand them. The point is to live everything – live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday, far into the future, you will gradually, without even knowing it, live your way into the answer.”Another one of my favorite quotes is by Lao Tzu, on the same subject:

Shapeable as a block of wood, receptive as a valley, clear as a glass of water, do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles? Can you remain unmoving until the right action arises by itself? The master does not seek fulfillment. Not seeking, not expecting, but present and welcoming the outcome of all things. I pray that it’s like that for you, and for me – that we can live the questions.

Spiritual-religious advice:

Learn to love, and live, the questions.

With love,

Flash Bang

February 6, 2026

✧✧✧ My buddy Marc meets me near my house at 3:30 on Saturday afternoon so we can bike to the small park named for Elizabeth Caruthers. I looked her up as I started to write this article. Elizabeth Caruthers was an early pioneer woman whose Supreme Court case led to the 1850 Donation Act—ruling that a woman, married or not,

Hiawatha Johnson, JR.

January 31, 2026

January 2026 — Portland, ORE Hiawatha Johnson, Jr., a mentor and friend died. Summer 1985 — Magic Camp Oakdale, Long Island I’m 15. He’s 30. He wears a dashiki. He uses a walking stick. I’m prepubescent. I listen to comedy cassettes on a Walkman. I’m in awe. ✧✧✧ I perform a rather banal magic act that year — me narrating

The Delay

January 14, 2026

2026 issue #03 — The Delay I’m in my buddy David’s car. He’s driving me from my mom’s apartment in NYC to Newark, NJ, where I’m going to catch a plane back home to Portland. David and I have been friends for fifty years. Amazing. My phone dings. I look at it. Nothing important. Just an alert from United. *

Love the Questions?!