“Curiosity killed the cat…” hmmm… that may be true. And although it may be true, it is also true that curiosity is a curious and important quality. Some people are curious, others are not. Maybe that’s one way the world is divided into “us” and “them.” For some, each day holds some curiosity… a new view of an old street, or seeing something one has not seen before. When we are curious, the world opens itself to us, shining full of curious things – and happenings.
As I reflect on my life in my elder years, I often return in memory to my Junior High years. I walked from our rented flat in a working class neighborhood of Milwaukee – I actually passed the Master Lock Company – on Fond du Lac Avenue, into the middle class neighborhood that surrounded Peckham Junior High School. At Robert M. LaFollette School and later at Clarke Street School on Milwaukee’s North Side, my classmates were also the children of factory workers and stay at home moms. But Peckham Junior High was in a lovely north side neighborhood with single family homes and carefully kept lawns. My world grew as I walked under the viaduct at 35th Street. I was a young person with open eyes and a keen interest in the world, a quality shared by my family. Right away, I noticed the differences in the neighborhood where Peckham J.H. stood, comparing what I saw in some deep, unspoken part of myself.
I was curious and I was smart, both qualities that have served me well in life. I had role models. At home, my parents listened to the news each morning from the radio that sat on top of the refrigerator in the kitchen. And they stayed up at night to watch the news at 10 o’clock, before they went to bed to get enough sleep before the alarm in their bedroom went off at 6 am. They read the daily newspaper – The Milwaukee Journal. Many years later, on the cold February day in 2001 that my mother was buried alongside my dad at their gravesite on the south side of Milwaukee, I walked away from the grave as my good friend Vickie walked alongside me in the cold. “You had neat parents,” she said.
I think curiosity is one quality that my parents had that made them “neat parents.” They were interested, not only in the world, but in my friends. And when Vicki lost her mother at a young age, they were particularly welcoming to her whenever she came to spend time with me.
The world can be a difficult place – often. We are assured of that by staying in touch with the news every day, as my parents did. As adults, they knew the pitfalls of life along with the kindness and goodness. The world can be a difficult place. But the world is endlessly interesting.
I was thinking about curiosity today when I was preaching about Nicodemus. Nicodemus, best known for visiting Jesus at night to discuss spiritual rebirth and later assisting with Jesus’ burial, had a journey from hidden curiosity to becoming a follower of Jesus. Nicodemus came at night to talk to Jesus, apparently curious himself about this man who was causing a stir as crowds followed him from place to place, eager to hear a good word, or eager to be healed.
I told the story of a time my big brother Ronn, who married in his early 20’s, came to me after his marriage and made a comment I have not forgotten. In a way, Ronn had always treated me as an equal, although he was 9 years older than me. And I’ve never forgotten what he said: “did you know that not everyone is interested in things, like our family is?” I understood then that he was reflecting on a difference he had noticed in his new wife’s family. He didn’t say more. I always loved Sue – love her still now that she’s been gone many years – but it is true, she did not have the interest in life that Ronn carried, as if he was carrying a gene that gave him a keen interest in learning, in new things. Later, he’d turn that interest to computers, and when I called him from across the country with a problem using my first computer at home, he’d patiently walk me through the steps I needed to get back on track.
And I suppose, like Nicodemus, curiosity might lead us into unknown, uncharted places. Maybe curiosity is responsible for whatever risks we take, a companion to the risk.
