Episode 247: Let's Get Curious About Curiosity
Curiosity should feel foundational for Latter-day Saints—it’s the birthplace of our religious tradition. Any member of the Church can recite the story of young Joseph Smith seeking wisdom he lacked. Curiosity is where any search for God—or for anything beyond ourselves—begins. It’s an open stance that can help us get comfortable when we find ourselves unexpectedly dropped into liminal space. Empathy has its origin in curiosity, as does creativity. All of this makes it a perfect wrap for our series of discussions centering change and transition. In Episode 247, Susan and Cynthia explore curiosity. It’s a season finale conversation that bridges to our upcoming Season 11 focus: Big Ideas.
Notes & Quotes:
ALSSI Ep. 241, Demystifying Mysticism | A Conversation with Kathryn Knight Sonntag
ALSSI Ep. 23, Grieving and Growing
The Terror of Surviving Cancer, by Suleika Jaouad, New York Times, 04/26/2025
At Last She Said It: Honest Conversations About Faith, Church, and Everything In Between, by Susan Hinckley and Cynthia Winward
Learning to Walk in the Dark, by Barbara Brown Taylor
All Reality is Interaction, Krista Tippett with Carlo Rovelli, On Being podcast, 03/12/2020
Ordinary Mysticism: Your Life as Sacred Ground, by Mirabai Starr
The Great Spiritual Migration: How the World’s Largest Religion Is Seeking a Better Way to Be Christian, by Brian McLaren
Following Christ, by Dallin H. Oaks, 10/2024
How We Live with Loss, Krista Tippett with Rachel Naomi Remen, On Being podcast, 06/02/2022
Slow Work, by Susan Hinckley, Say More: At Last She Writes It, No. 47, 10/2025
Stop Fueling Doubts, by Russell M. Nelson
Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
Choosing Curiosity Over Fear, Krista Tippet with Elizabeth Gilbert, On Being podcast, 05/24/2018
This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories that Make Us, by Cole Arthur Riley
Lord, Increase My Bewilderment, Coming Down to Earth with Barbara Brown Taylor, 10/30/2025
“The great Achilles heel of Protestant mysticism is that it disconnected itself from the imaginal world. Once you do that, you can only go so deep. You’ll remain on the level of where the conscious mind can be in control of the story.” —Richard Rohr
“That’s what I found on the other side of fear: the knowledge that I can handle it, whatever ‘it’ is—as long as I’m one percent more curious than afraid.” —Suleika Jaouad
“Who wants to seek when they fear that what they find may be unacceptable?” —Susan Hinckley, (p. 55)
“Become more curious about your own darkness. What can you learn about your fear of it by staying with it for a moment before turning on the lights? Where can you feel the fear in your body? When have you felt that way before? What are you afraid is going to happen to you, and what is your mind telling you to do about it? What stories do you tell yourself to keep your fear in place? What helps you stay conscious even when you are afraid? What have you learned in the dark that you could never have learned in the light?”—Barbara Brown Taylor, (p. 185)
“It would be dangerous for a Christian leader to say this, because even admitting the possibility that our beliefs might be wrong could set the heresy watchdogs growling and howling. But it would also be dangerous not to say this, because presuming to be error-free would send most thoughtful people looking for the door.” —Brian McLaren, (p.37)
“I have no answers, but I have a lot of questions. And those questions have helped me to live better than any answers I might find.”—Rachel Naomi Remen
"I realized something: faith wasn’t a tidy thing to carry in my pocket like an ID card. It wasn’t membership in a club or assenting to someone else’s rules and principles. Faith didn’t really have much to do with what I knew or didn’t know, but was instead about how to know.” —Susan Hinckley
“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” —Zora Neale Hurston
“Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” —Rainer Maria Rilke
“I think curiosity is our friend that teaches us how to become ourselves. And it’s a very gentle friend and a very forgiving friend, and a very constant one.” —Elizabeth Gilbert
“To encounter the holy in the ordinary is to find God in the liminal—in spaces where we might subconsciously exclude it, including the sensory moments that are often illegibly spiritual.”
“Wonder… is a force of liberation. It makes sense of what our souls inherently know we were meant for. Every mundane glimpse is salve on a wound, instructions for how to set the bone right again. If you really want to get free, find God on the subway. Find God in the soap bubble.” —Cole Arthur Riley
“Lord, increase my bewilderment.” —Barbara Brown Taylor quoting Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr!, (page 290)
“What a petition! What a verb! To ask for more bewilderment, not less, from a higher power who must hear billions of prayers for more certainty, more conviction, more proof, more faith. I wrote the prayer down, then realized that wasn’t necessary. It was only four words long, with such good news in it that I memorized it before the ink dried. My increasing bewilderment wasn’t a problem after all. It was an answer to prayer.” —Barbara Brown Taylor
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when one contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries to comprehend only a little of this mystery every day.” —Albert Einstein
“My faith is held together by wonder—by every defiant commitment to presence and paying attention.” —Cole Arthur Riley, (p. 41)