on questions
"And how many a sign within the heavens and earth do they pass over while they are turning away from it?" [Quran
12:105]
One Report is spiritually-minded content for and by young people. This publication is borne from a reflection of the teachings of the Baha’i Faith and many of our contributors are Baha’is, but not all. The goal is for One Report to offer space for people from all faith backgrounds and beliefs to discuss issues of faith and spirituality. In a time of turmoil, One Report hopes to be a source of unity and collaboration. It is an opportunity for young people to learn from one another and share reflections that feel relevant, pressing, stirring, and elevated. Thank you.
One Report is edited by Anisa Tavangar with Maya Mansour. Images in this issue are by Ashley Armitage. Models featured include Lena O’Neal, Shivana, Chase Hagar, Lenaig Delisle, Leilani Etherton, Irene Bowen, Beija Flor, Sam Cunliffe, Maya Mansour, Maryv Benoit, Chella Man, Lexi, Noemie, Heidi Engerman, Lindsay Zae, Irene Bowen, & Lily Wirth.
Aligning with Soul wants Written by Wynton St. Clair
Questions are seemingly intrinsic to human nature. We ask in order to understand our world and the cosmos beyond our reach. The questions remain hidden until it becomes clear what is missing from our understanding. What’s beyond the horizon? What is a soul? Why does pain exist? But no question puzzles me more than asking what my soul wants. What does it need for me to understand? This of course is very different from knowing what I want or what I might desire. Materially, physically, and even when it comes to a partner, I know what I’m looking for. I know what I want. These wants aren’t always aligned with what my spirit wants. What some call the will of God. I want to know what my soul wants. I want to know what it needs. And maybe more meaningfully, I want to know how to align my desire with that need. I ask “what do I need to do?” and hopefully, I’m receptive to the answer. And that’s the tricky part about questions, especially the big ones. The answers aren’t always what you might want them to be. Receptivity becomes all too important after you ask the question. Can I separate from what I thought I wanted? And realign to something far more meaningful, even if I can’t yet understand? Well, that’s the question isn’t it?
The Wisdom of trees Written by Juliet Cangelosi
Whenever I encounter a tree, I often like to imagine its insides, each ring within the protective bark documenting a sacred history. Its innermost core tells us an origin story, and from this spirals out decades of traced growth, through dry seasons to rainy ones, and even the scars of a forest fire. I find myself humbled in the presence of trees of a certain age, like a centuries-old oak I recently stood with in Florida, its long arms so heavy with life in all directions that they gently set themselves on the ground. It was as if the tree were beckoning toward the rest of the world in a gracious welcome on that warm, late summer day.
“There are so many
Winter is upon us unanswerable questions now. The barrenness of the remaining bit that surface within my of earth in the city spirit at the end of seems to mock my own every year, and yet I internal feelings of deep isolation and sadness. forget that the trees As a daily practice, that line my block have I go on a walk down seen generations worth Chicago’s neighborhood streets, finding of winters.� minimal comfort in static brownstones and cracked sidewalks. There are no more living gardens or tall, smiling tulips left, no more rustling green leaves
making whispers of music—every gray corner merely reflects back an inertia that I’ve come to know very well. This weekend, I went on another walk and looked at all the trees being trees I could find along the side streets. Each one I passed, my head craned up toward their towering, nearly-naked branches and meditated on the few remaining browned leaves that still held on in trembling. I thought about what it meant to listen to the living earth and let it be my teacher. There are so many unanswerable questions that surface within my spirit at the end of every year, and yet I forget that the trees that line my block have seen generations worth of winters. They have endured harsher days than I may ever know, and they live to tell the tale deep within their anatomy. Furthermore, their vulnerable state is a daily reminder that enduring a difficult season is not only about survival but about the thriving that occurs on the other side of it. I see empty branches and feel my own emptiness, but in this mutual understanding between two living things, I am filled with hope. The sturdiness and wisdom of trees tells me that I too can be vulnerable. I too can thrive.
clarity in questions Written by Tom Kochtitzky
“Questioning” is the best way to define my faith. While traditionally I’d be considered agnostic, I’ve grown into a practice of call and response with the universe. When my life seeks clarity, I ask. It can be anything from a curious look to a journal entry. My practice of questioning most often manifests in the minutiae of daily life. While I’m driving, taking a shower, cycling to work, or washing the dishes, I allow my mind to wander. These activities allow the recesses of my brain to materialize the deeper underlying questions behind my most surface level dilemmas. By asking a question, I open myself up to the unknown; a place of mysticism and more importantly, change. When I ask questions, it’s
“The path to holiness lies through questioning everything.” M. Scott Peck
not because I’m looking for answers, it’s because I’m identifying the things that are developing. Of course, the answers are always welcome; the things I used to worry about have become points of confidence. The most important part of my practice is surrendering to the unknown, proceeding without preference or aspiration, leaving room only for truth. I often find myself repeating my questions to friends, acquaintances, and even strangers waiting patiently for something that resonates with truth. More often than not, there isn’t an “ah-ha!” moment, but rather a slow transition to a new set of questions as the previous set have slowly and quietly been answered in the background. Close your eyes. Breathe. Look out the window. Go for a run.
"It is more important to ask not which questions are right or which are wrong, but rather which are relevant to the healthy and hopeful survival of humanity at this time" Bahiyyih
Nakhjavani
real faith, blind faith Written by Omotayo Balogun
I grew up in a very Evangelical Christian household. We were the kind of family that went to church on Sundays, listened to Christian-rock on the radio, and attended Bible study once a month. I received the message that the Bible is the one true word of God. But, as I learned about Christianity at church and studied everything else in school, I encountered more than one instance where the things in the Bible conflicted with my liberal education. “If God created the world in 7 days, why is there so much evidence for evolution?” “If God is truly just, why are there are so many examples of racial and gender inequality in the Bible?” “If Jesus believes in ‘loving thy neighbor,’ why is the Evangelical Church canonically anti-LGBTQ+, Islamophobic, etc.? “Are my non-Christian friends and family going to Hell?” “Why are there so many different religions?” These are the questions that kept me up at night during my early adolescence, but I didn’t dare ask these questions in Sunday school. Unlike regular school where I learned about the scientific method
and the importance of forming and testing a hypothesis, questioning one’s faith was not encouraged in Sunday school. I did, however, bring my questions directly to God. My grandmother, the most prayerful Christian I know, taught me to pray. “Prayer,” she said, “is a lifeline connecting us directly to God.” This idea that I had a personal relationship with God emboldened me to question Them directly. Over time, God helped me to reconcile my belief in both creationism and evolution. As I studied the Bible, God revealed to me the idea of “the oneness of humanity.” These conversations with God led me to understand that racism, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination could not be things of God.
I stopped going to church when I left for boarding school at 15, mostly because it was no longer convenient. At the same time, I was relieved that I would no longer be in the company of people with values that conflicted with those that I was cultivating in my relationship with God. By the time I left for college at 18, I was no longer identifying as Christian. “I grew up Christian, and I love Jesus, but I don’t vibe with the Church. I’m more spiritual than religious,” I told a classmate during freshman orientation. These days, my spiritual practice involves a mixture of prayer, meditation, and astrology, specifically the Co-Star app, which creates hyper-personalized horoscopes. At its best, I’ve found the app to be scarily accurate, and at its worst, scathingly honest. Which is why when I received the same vague notification from the for the fourth time in a week, I started to feel like the Universe™ was trying to tell me something. “Real faith isn’t blind,” my phone chimes at me for the fifth time this week. This time, I don’t instinctively swipe the notification away. Instead, I consider the musings of the app and a lyric from “Miracle,” one of my favorite Paramore songs, comes to mind. “It’s not faith if you use your eyes.” While these two sayings present a binary view of faith, my conversations with God have led me to an understanding of faith rooted in the visible and the invisible. Real faith is the realization that as humans, we will never understand everything, and therefore must maintain a life-long curiosity for the mysteries of the world around us. Like scientists, we must continuously question in the search for the Truth. Sometimes we will come across questions that only God can answer, but luckily, we have prayer as a lifeline. In those times, call on God. I promise They’ll respond.
“Be fair, ye peoples of the world; is it meet and seemly for you to question the authority of One Whose presence ‘He Who conversed with God’ [Moses] hath longed to attain, the beauty of Whose countenance ‘God’s Wellbeloved’ [Muhammad] had yearned to behold, through the potency of Whose love the ‘Spirit of God’ [Jesus] ascended to heaven, for Whose sake the ‘Primal Point’ [the Báb] offered up His life?” Baha’u’llah
The fact of the unknown Written by Maddie DePorter
How can I improve? How am I affecting others negatively or positively? Have I stopped learning? Have I continued to challenge myself and my beliefs? I am a firm believer that we should always be evolving, and asking questions assists this evolution. To reject change is to go against human nature. I do not consider myself the most spiritual or religious person, as I tend to lead a life based on “facts” and “correct answers”. However, solely living my life this way has led to stunted growth and a closed mind, and has had a negative impact on my life. The more I question myself and others around me, the more I experience an improvement in open communication, personal growth, and connection with others. These questions have helped illuminate what spirituality means to me: human connection. My spirituality is connected in the here and now, in the moment-to-moment interactions with strangers that fulfill me and spark questions. Our world and ourselves as individuals can only benefit from asking questions rather than “knowing” the answers.
"Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known." Jeremiah 33:3
On the deepest questions Written by David Golden
The question is the path. I’m talking about the deepest philosophical questions of the human collective. The ones that don’t have tangible answers, the questions that have burdened thinking men and women since the dawn of reason and the ones that still burden us today. Doesn’t everyone look to religion or spirituality for answers? Religions are built around these certain people because they have been enlightened to the answers. The spiritual path is the question. I know on my path, which is unique to my own essence, I have been chasing God with a boundless stream of questions but hardly ever answers, each question faithfully bringing me closer to God. Who am I? The infinite regress of questions in an endless abyss of light or is it darkness? I can’t tell anymore. You must be quiet, still like an unwavering flame in the wind. No one can answer these questions for you, as they are on their own unique path presenting their essence to the world. There is beauty in being able to ask questions, to question everything, even your own existence. We will conquer the stars yet still have explored only a fragment of what it is to be human. We were made in God’s image afterall.
My mind is a desert. An untold labyrinth. The deeper I go, the more doors I find. A neverending wasteland and I’m all alone to fight the demons. I’m winning and getting closer to the truth. I will find a way out and when I do, I will teach the truth through my actions, just like those certain central figures who in which entire religions are based on. They can’t tell you the answers but they can show you with their actions, to be a guide is the path of those who dare to venture into the void.
“Yes, Kālāmas, it is proper that your have doubt, that you have perplexity, for a doubt has arisen in a matter which is doubtful. Now, look you Kālāmas, do not be led by reports, or traditions, or hearsay. Be not led by the authority of religious texts, not by the delight in speculative opinions, nor by seeming possibilities, not by the idea: ‘this is our teacher’. But, O Kālāmas, when you know for yourself that certain things are unwholesome, and wrong, and bad, then give them up... And when you know for yourself that certain things are wholesome and good, then accept them and follow them.” The Buddha
The significance of answers Written by Michael Dean
Before an answer finds you, the question exists. They dance off of one another in a push and pull tango. Wonderment is like the in-and-out-breathing of our consciousness. *question, answer* *question, answer*. Although the two are co-depending, answers are distinctive and particularly significant. Questions are vital to help us navigate but answers are the gateway to understanding. They are distinctive by nature. The irony is that answers are also inherently mysterious. Once we stumble upon these answers, the doors of a new infinite wonderment becomes enlightened within us, leading to understanding and ultimately to connection. When we arrive upon answers, we don’t come to destinations. We embark into newly accessible territory further upon the journey of understanding. What we are able to understand, we are able to connect to or find connection in. Vice versa, we connect to what we are able to have an understanding of. We are instinctively curious. It’s our curiosity leaning us into the winds of the unknown. The answers we discover and uncover like finding buried treasure swims us out toward depths of Understanding. With answers, we grow deeper understandings which births more questions leading ultimately to bridges of connections. A web of knowns and unknowns. Interconnectedness is arguably the most common and complex theme of the Universe. Connection is everything so we seek to gain understanding through answers revealed to us inspired by questions. It’s a dance.
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