A Beginner's Mind - Reflection by Rev. Mees Curate

A Beginner’s Mind

Last year, I took up the banjo. I started learning to play the banjo because we had one, not because I had any particular affinity with banjo music or anything. My husband comes from a very musical family, in which musical instruments are normal things to ask for for birthdays and Christmas, and so one year they had given him a banjo. And then I was looking for a hobby, especially something that required my full embodied attention. So Loel dug up the banjo out of the closet, I found beginner’s banjo lessons on Youtube, and off I went.

I’m not very good, but getting good is not the point. I don’t really care if I ever get ‘good’ at banjo. I enjoy learning new things, and I love broadening my horizons. Before, I had no idea that the banjo might feel like the quintessential American instrument, but it actually has its roots in Sub Saharan Africa. It came to America via enslaved people. (In that sense, it is quintessentially American—both because enslaved Africans and their African-American descendants helped make America, but also because the legacy of slavery is woven into our national story in ways we can’t and shouldn’t even try to deny.) In short, banjo is a much more complex instrument than its ‘hillbilly’ legacy might have you think. How cool is that?!

In Zen Buddhism, there’s a concept called ‘beginner’s mind,’ and it is about approaching situations with an open mind, without judgement or preconceived ideas. You could contrast it with an expert’s mind, in the sense that experts are so practiced at what they do that they stop seeing new possibilities. (“But we’ve always done it this way” is the church version of an expert mind.) But it’s also about being more forgiving with ourselves, more compassionate, less judgmental. It’s a great framing when you try something new, like learning a musical instrument, but I actually think it’s also great for discipleship—for living out our faith every day.

Christian contemplative Richard Rohr urges people to “pray for the grace of beginner’s mind,” as he says that “what blocks spiritual teaching is the assumption that we already know.” We think we already know what God wants, or what we’re supposed to do or be in this life, or who we are. We see the problems and injustices around us and we don’t see how they get better.

It’s easy to feel hopeless. But the grace of beginner’s mind invites us to take a different stance.

I’ve been humming one particular song to myself a lot lately. It’s one of our third Sunday songs, the one that goes like this: another world is not only possible, she is on her way/on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing/She is on her way (“Another World,” Ana Hernandez). That’s my beginner’s mind practice when I don’t know what to do. It reminds me that God’s desires for us are bigger and better than we can ask or imagine, and what’s more, it’s not my job to dream up this new world—that’s God’s job. It’s my job to keep my eyes and ears open and my feet moving. Even when I don’t know exactly where I’m going, I do know that each step I take in Love, and towards Love, and with Love, is the right one. God will do the rest.