Last night, as I stayed awake and read one more chapter in Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts, I got to thinking about the questions I've asked in my life -- and still, pretty much across the board, have continued to hold for years.

A retreat director I once met would call them persistent questions. "What persistent question are you holding right now?" he asked.

At the time, having just started out on my nonviolence journey, I was holding the question, "How do we grow in our capacity to love?" I looked through my journal of notes from the week-long retreat, and that question or some form of it was on almost every single page.

I go back to that idea of persistent questions now and then.

And it's interesting to me that the questions seldom change. The same questions have persisted for years and years. They've formed the person I've become and the work that I am now called with my life to do.

These questions have been, and continue to be:

What is grace?
What is my need for Jesus?
Is love really the transforming force that overcomes violence? Why? And how?
How do we grow in our capacity to love?
How do we learn to receive love?
Where is God in the darkness?

That last one is rather new, born out of the darknesses I've watched people I dearly love struggle through and out of my journey that continually bumps me up against the dark reality of pain, evil, and suffering in the world.

What about you?

Do you have persistent questions you've carried throughout your life? What question or questions are you carrying right now?