The questions we ask

I am living in an artificially established environment. I live in a house where 13; fourteen counting me, people have been brought together to live and work in community. We join another 14 from the Mac and the total Resident staff, another 14, to do the work of the Iona community on the island. Those of us working here are here for very specific time periods, residents from 1 – 3 years and volunteers 6 – 12 weeks. What that means for you as a volunteer is changes are the people who are here when you arrive, will not be the people here when you leave. It means your life here is a constant follow of people you have come to love leaving, and people you will come to love, arriving. This means a couple of things; you establish relationships quickly, you become aware of others habits rapidly, you understand the rhythms of the lives of others and you ask a lot of questions.
In addition, to the staff here on Iona, we have guests that arrive each Saturday and they depart on the following Friday. We will meet them at Saturday dinner and rush down to the ferry to say so long on the Friday. We will then spend the in between time getting ready for new guests. We are aware that when they arrive we only have five days and six nights with them, so we need to get to know them right away.
I have discovered that the questions we ask say a lot about us. Certainly we begin many of our new conversations by asking names and where you are from. We do try to make sure that if there is someone from near where a resident or volunteer is from that we make those connections for them. For example, last week there was a couple from New Zealand, so we made certain they met the two volunteers from New Zealand. This has proven to be a bit of a geography challenge, particularly for those without an appreciation for the vast expanse of the U.S. At lunch the other day someone asked a young woman from Minnesota how the oil spill was affecting her. By the same token, when the woman from Zanesville, Ohio asked me about how the oil spill was effecting me, and I shared with her the work of the church with her, she was in tears.
We are also aware of the guests schedule, so we know what activites that they are engaged in, so we can ask questions about their day specific to the events of that day. But by the time they return from the island pilgrimage on Tuesday, there is a tendency to begin asking the deeper questions. What are you looking for? Why are you here? What were you expecting? Even, how are you feeling? When guests are leaving they have a group meeting and are asked by a resident staff member three questions: What surprised you? What challenged you? When did you feel most alive?
I believe we don’t ask as many questions of those that we spend our day to day with, whether because we know the answer, or think we do, or because we assume they will tell us. What if we didn’t have to experience the regret of uncertainty and simply asked the questions that need to be asked? How much time would be gained? How much confusion and uncertainty could be eliminated simply by asking a question about what we wanted or needed to know? What if we learned the truth about a situation, rather than depending on our preconceived notions or worse misconceptions?