Trust in What You Do Not Yet Know
An adaptation of Rev. Lori’s Sunday Sermon on March 23rd, 2025
In life, we often face the unknown. We make choices, take leaps of faith, and step into experiences without having all the answers. This is especially true in significant moments, like a marriage. During wedding ceremonies, I include a "declaration to be married," where I ask couples: "Knowing what you know of the other and trusting in what you do not yet know, is it your intention to be married with them this day?"
Marriage is a commitment to a journey, recognizing that you will learn, experience, and do new things over time. The trust is that you can weather these changes, or at least make every attempt to do so in a safe and healthy environment. You are committing to the journey.
The Mystery of Relationships and the Nature of Trust
Relationships, and indeed people themselves, are a mystery. We enter into committed relationships with trust, knowing we love someone and believing there will always be a way forward, trusting in the unfolding of more mystery.
This reminds me of a story about the physicist Niels Bohr. A visitor once noticed a horseshoe above his door and asked if he, a scientist, truly believed in such superstitions. Bohr replied, "Of course not. But I'm told it works even if you don't believe in it." This is faith and trust in something you don’t understand—a recognition of a mystery bigger than us, exceeding our capacity to know.
I share this story because it speaks to a profound aspect of the human experience: our relationship with uncertainty. As Unitarian Universalists, we often pride ourselves on our rational approach to faith, on our commitment to reason and evidence. Yet, we gather Sunday after Sunday, drawn by something we can't quite name.
What brings us here? It's not dogma, or a shared belief in a specific deity or sacred text. Perhaps it's something far more mysterious—a recognition that we are all walking in the dark together, holding hands as we go.
Think about the most meaningful moments in your life: falling in love, bringing a child into the world, creating something new, or standing up for what you believe is right. Did you have certainty then? Did you have proof that things would work out? Of course not. You had something far more powerful: trust.
Trust vs. Belief
Trust is different from belief. Belief claims to know. Trust admits it doesn't know, and moves forward anyway. Trust is what allows us to put one foot in front of the other when the path ahead is shrouded in fog. It's what allows us to say "I love you" without any guarantee of what tomorrow might bring.
The poet Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote to a young artist: "Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." This is what it means to trust in what we do not yet know—to live the questions, to embrace the mystery.
Some might say this approach is lightweight or wishful thinking. But I argue it's the most honest stance we can take. What do we truly know with absolute certainty? Science itself, that great bastion of knowledge, is built on the understanding that every theory is provisional, that today's facts might be tomorrow's footnotes. This has played out again and again throughout history. Consider:
Physicians once treated illness based on the theory of four bodily humors.
Scientists were certain that light traveled through "luminiferous aether."
Nineteenth-century anatomists insisted that bumps on the skull (phrenology) revealed personality.
Each of these theories was accepted as fact by the finest minds of their time, only to be gently set aside as our understanding grew. What humility this should teach us! What openness to wonder this should inspire!
The Unfolding Universe and the Wisdom Within
And yet, the universe continues to unfold. Plants still grow toward the light without understanding phototropism. Birds still navigate vast distances without studying celestial navigation. Children still learn to walk without taking a single physics class. Life continues; creation creates, beyond our limited understanding.
There's a Jewish teaching that says before a child is born, an angel teaches it all the wisdom of the world. But just before birth, the angel touches the child's upper lip, creating the philtrum—that small groove we all have—and the child forgets everything. We spend our lives remembering what we once knew, trusting in a wisdom that feels just beyond our grasp.
When we light our chalice each Sunday, we're not lighting it because we're certain of anything. We're lighting it as an act of trust—trust in our capacity to grow, to learn, to love, to make meaning together. We're lighting it to remind ourselves that even in darkness, we can create light.
Love is our north star.
We use our principles to orient us, principles centered around love. Love is my North Star. As the children light their chalice every Sunday, they say: "We are Unitarian Universalists who put love at the center of our lives. We light this chalice today to practice giving thanks for all that we have." Love and gratitude are key.
Love is the core of our principles and the center of the new values the UUA has adopted nationally. While we haven’t yet explored these new values as a congregation, the beautiful aspect is that love is at their center. Love is the core, love is the point.
The Bible says it: 1st Corinthians 13 tells us faith, hope, and love abide, these three, but the greatest of all is love. Other spiritualities and belief systems orient themselves this way too. And if you orient yourself differently, that is certainly okay here.
Finding and Making Love (or Your Own North Star)
Some people may not see or feel they experience love. I say that is where you are invited to trust. If you believe that love is there, you will see it. It's like when you buy a certain car; you start to see that type of car everywhere. Believe that love is the point, and you will begin to see it around you. Look for the helpers. Turn yourself to where love exists and focus on it. And when you feel its absence, make it. Make love happen. Ask not what your country or the universe can do for you. Do it for yourself and do it for others. Manifest it in the world.
Please consider what you orient yourself to. Then, pray about it, meditate on it, reflect on it, write about it, sing about it. Trust in it.
There’s a story about a Christian minister who was completely overwhelmed by pastoral care, capital campaign demands, and church politics. His days were filled with business, and he told a mentor, "I am lost. I am losing faith, and I don’t even have time to eat anymore. And I don’t see God in anything." The mentor said, "Then you need to add in an hour of prayer." The mentor was saying: reorient yourself to the most important thing, and then you will see it in your life again.
Prayer has always been important to me, even from a young age. While my working and orientation of prayer and my concept of the Divine have changed through the years, I spend time there at least twice a day. The prayers that have always been answered are the ones where I don’t ask for something specific. A prayer that tries to control an outcome has never succeeded for me. It is a prayer of surrender that has filled me with direction and blessing: "God, I don’t even know what I need or what to do, but help me. I know that love is the answer, and I want to be a part of that love. Show me the way." Those are my most effective prayers—reorienting myself and then trusting. That is a trust fall.
Your North Star, Your Responsibility
No judgment, by the way, if your North Star isn't love. Upon reflection, I believe that you can come to know what it is for yourself. Please commit to finding it! And cultivate trust in it. When you feel an absence of the most important thing there is, even if it is not love, I invite you to inject that into the world. Your important thing, your North Star, could be justice or fairness or mercy. You have as much responsibility for bringing it alive as it does for just showing up for you.
As a UU minister, I’m not here to give you answers. Instead, I invite you to join me in the questions. I did and do believe that Love is at the core, and that we have principles and values that continuously point us there. You may have other ideas, and as a UU minister, I support you. Your spiritual companions here have committed to this as well.
Trusting in the Journey Together
Trust in the process of seeking, in the wisdom of uncertainty, in the knowledge that we don't have to know everything to know enough. We come together to orient ourselves with principles towards values. We come together to be a community that supports one another in orienting ourselves and each other. We trust that in coming together we will be held, and that in holding others in the light, we will illuminate our way forward as well.
We are not in charge of it all. I hope we can agree on that. We can't control the outcomes, only our commitment to bringing about an outcome, while also committing to trusting that there will be an outcome that points us in the direction of love and kindness and freedom and justice and mercy.
Things are so messy. Life is so messy. We don’t truly know how to clean it up. We don’t know where things are going or what our part in it is. It is a mystery. We do know some things. We do know what is important to us. If we forget, let us take time to remember and refocus. If others forget, let us help remind them and support them in their not-knowing if need be.
Our spiritual journey is to be gentle with ourselves and each other in our not-knowing. Let us hold our questions as carefully as we hold our answers. Let us trust in the mystery that holds us all—not because we can prove it, but because, like Bohr's horseshoe, it works even if we don't believe in it. Together, let us trust in what we do not yet know.
May it be so.
Amen, and blessed be.
