Devoutness is yet another thing. When I think of a devout person, I imagine someone constantly on the knees, praying (to God, or the gods, or another); or someone longing to give life and future for a cause (like justice, liberation, patriotism, or more money); or someone's devoted attachment to a person or thing (such as a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a football team, or success); or someone's faithful loyalty to a person or thing whatever may come (the dog is a sublime example, but the ancients approved such devotion from clients to patrons and subjects to rulers). I'm here to propose another way of devoutness. I plan to become devout by asking questions.
These questions are usually based on the senses. For example: What is being broken here? Broken open (to reveal something); or broken into (to release something); or maybe broken apart, to sort some things out? Where is this gesture pointing? To myself, or somewhere else, or to Another? When was this thing seen? Before, or after? Who is being held here? Held in arms, heart, mind, memory, spirit? How do we know by taste or smell if this thing is good, or bitter, or better (honey in the medicine)? How is it being heard here? By word, music, natural sound, or no sound? But the most important and interesting question of all, and the most likely to lead to clarity, is this: what is actually going on here?
It's said that Thomas Aquinas was a silent child, but at the age of five he suddenly broke his silence with the urgent question: "What is God?" Thomas believed that reason is informed by the senses (another kind of sensibility). He made mistakes, of course --- what d'you expect from the thirteenth century? --- but he spent the rest of his life trying to answer this question. At the end he felt that all his answers were like straw, to be burnt up by fire. You may easily disagree with me, but I think devotion isn't in the answers, but in the questions.
