May 10, 2026

“Daring to Know”

Rev. Kurt Hohmann

Daring to Know

Soul Matters: Awakening Curiosity

  • The season: mid-May
    • The world is fully erupting into green, and the instinct to look closer feels almost biological.
      • Translucent new leaves.
      • Warblers passing through.
      • The forest floor doing its urgent work before the canopy closes.
    • The world is in its fullest act of curiosity about itself.
      • Reaching toward light without knowing what it will find.
    • Curiosity as a natural impulse, written into living things.
    • What are you reaching toward?
  • Transition
    • Curiosity is a sacred posture rather than merely a personality trait.
      • A willingness to lean in without needing to control the outcome.
    • Last month, possibility cracked the egg open.
      • Curiosity is what climbs out and starts exploring.

Tales of Three Women (in Honor of Mother’s Day)

  • Eve
    • In the beginning there was a garden.
      • Everything needed for life was there:
        • Food.
        • Water.
        • Shade.
        • Companionship.
        • The easy warmth of a world that asked nothing difficult of its inhabitants.
    • At the center of the garden stood a tree.
      • Not hidden.
      • Not locked away.
      • Impossible to ignore.
      • The fruit was beautiful, but beauty wasn’t why Eve reached for it.
    • The serpent may have encouraged her…
      • But she reached because it was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
      • She wanted moral discernment.
      • She wanted to understand the shape of the world well enough to live wisely.
      • Perhaps the most human desire there is.
    • She ate.
      • She knew.
      • She shared the fruit with Adam because curiosity isn’t meant to be hoarded.
    • Everything changed.
      • The garden receded.
      • Mortality entered.
      • Consciousness brought shame, effort, and the complicated work of being alive.
      • The punishment may actually be consciousness itself.
    • Questions
      • Was this a wound?
      • Or the birth of something essential?
    • The serpent didn’t lie.
      • “You will know more.”
      • “You will be like gods, knowing good and evil.”
      • And she did.
    • What if we’ve misunderstood the story?
      • What if it wasn’t the Fall?
      • What if it was the birth?
      • What if Eve didn’t lose paradise…
      • …but simply outgrew it?
  • Pandora
    • When Prometheus stole fire from heaven…
      • Zeus retaliated by giving Pandora to Epimetheus.
      • She was entrusted with a sealed jar.
    • Background
      • Pandora means “all-gifted.”
      • Earlier traditions suggest she was once a goddess of abundance.
      • Hesiod recast her as:
        • A beautiful punishment.
        • A curious woman who couldn’t leave things alone.
      • Hesiod needed someone to blame.
        • A theology of decline.
        • A golden age ruined by humanity.
    • She opens the jar.
      • Because of course she does.
      • Because curiosity is one of her gifts.
    • What escapes?
      • Suffering.
      • Disease.
      • Hard labor.
      • Death.
    • Questions
      • Were these things ever truly contained?
      • Or were they always part of what it means to be alive?
    • What remains?
      • Hope.
      • Not merely a consolation prize.
      • The most powerful thing in the jar.
      • Still available.
      • Still ours to reach for.
    • Pandora isn’t the villain.
      • She opened humanity to the full range of experience.
      • Hope never abandoned us.
  • Persephone
    • Version One
      • She is taken.
      • A girl gathering flowers.
      • The earth opens.
      • Hades claims her.
      • Demeter’s grief silences the birds and stops the grain from growing.
    • Version Two
      • She chooses.
      • The underworld calls to something the garden cannot satisfy.
      • She descends because she is ready:
        • To know what lies beneath.
        • To understand death.
        • To become more than her mother’s daughter.
    • She knowingly eats the pomegranate seeds.
      • An act of curiosity.
      • A deliberate taste of something dark and sweet.
      • Binding her forever to two worlds.
    • Different perspectives
      • Her mother calls it tragedy.
      • The gods call it complication.
      • The legal minds of Olympus call it a contract.
    • Persephone knows the underworld from the inside.
      • She emerges as its Queen.

Three Women, One Pattern

  • Eve, Pandora, and Persephone wear different cultural clothing…
    • But they tell remarkably similar stories.
    • Three women.
    • Three acts of reaching.
    • Three different kinds of knowing.
  • Each has been blamed.
    • Yet, on closer inspection, each is doing something sacred.
  • Eve
    • Dares to know good and evil.
      • Moral consciousness.
  • Pandora
    • Dares to know what is inside the jar.
      • Releasing the full range of human experience.
  • Persephone
    • Dares to know the underworld.
      • Gaining authority over depth and darkness.
  • A common pattern emerges.
    • A woman reaches toward knowledge.
    • She is warned not to.
    • She reaches anyway.
    • She is blamed for what follows.
    • The story becomes a cautionary tale about female disobedience.
  • Look more closely before accepting that interpretation.
  • All three women interact with the underworld.
    • The serpent belongs to the underworld.
    • Pandora’s jar carries chthonic associations.
    • Persephone literally descends.
  • All three permanently change humanity’s relationship with:
    • Mortality.
    • Suffering.
    • Consciousness.
  • The women who made us mortal also made us fully human.

Rehabilitating the Stories

  • Eve
    • She reaches for moral discernment—not simple appetite.
    • She wants to know good from evil.
    • Perhaps Eden is not paradise lost…
      • But childhood ended.
    • Consciousness becomes birth, not fall.
  • Pandora
    • The “all-gifted one” became the “all-blamed one.”
    • Curiosity released everything.
    • But left us with the most important gift:
      • Hope.
    • Hope remains:
      • Still available.
      • Still within reach.
    • Perhaps Hope stayed behind not because it was weak…
      • But because it was the strongest thing in the jar.
  • Persephone
    • The seed tasted in darkness bound her to two worlds.
    • She didn’t merely survive the underworld.
      • She became its Queen.
    • Curiosity became authority.
  • The real wound is not curiosity.
    • The real wound is teaching us to fear knowing.
    • The stories became warnings rather than invitations.
  • We still carry those warnings.
    • “Curiosity killed the cat.”
    • Don’t ask too many questions.
    • Stay comfortable.
  • Curiosity does have consequences.
    • Eve cannot unknow.
    • Pandora cannot close the jar again.
    • Persephone cannot untaste the pomegranate.
  • Knowing changes us forever.
    • But becoming more fully alive is worth that cost.
  • Despair closes.
    • Curiosity opens.
    • Anyone who can still ask questions has not yet been defeated.

Returning to the Season

  • The leaves are still translucent.
  • The warblers are still passing through.
  • The world is still reaching.
  • Mother’s Day invites us to honor these women differently.
    • Not simply as mothers of children.
    • But as mothers of our humanity.
    • They gave birth to:
      • Consciousness.
      • Hope.
      • The capacity for depth.
    • They made us who we are by daring to know.

Practices for the Week

  • Contemplative / Perceptual
    • The Five-Minute Look
      • Choose one natural thing this week.
      • Give it five uninterrupted minutes of attention.
      • Don’t analyze.
      • Simply look.
      • Allow yourself to be surprised.
    • Beginner’s Mind
      • Approach something familiar as if you’ve never encountered it before.
      • Your morning coffee.
      • Your commute.
      • Your partner’s face.
  • Intellectual / Relational
    • Follow one thread of curiosity.
      • Ask one more question.
      • Read one more article.
      • Have one more conversation.
    • Ask the question you’ve been holding.
      • The one that feels:
        • Too basic.
        • Too strange.
        • Too dangerous.
      • Name it—even if only to yourself.
    • Have one curious conversation.
      • Your only goal is understanding.
      • No debate.
      • No agenda.
      • Simply wonder about another person’s inner world.
  • Spiritual / Devotional
    • Curiosity as prayer.
      • Offer your question to whatever you hold sacred.
      • Sit with it without demanding an answer.
    • Gratitude reframe.
      • Instead of gratitude for what you have…
      • Practice gratitude for what you still wonder about.
    • Threshold awareness.
      • Notice moments when you could:
        • Look.
        • Ask.
        • Step further in.
      • Choose one threshold to cross.
  • Communal
    • Share one genuine question with someone you trust.
    • Practice not knowing together.

Closing

  • Curiosity has often been portrayed as:
    • Dangerous.
    • Transgressive.
    • Punishable.
  • Yet these women reveal something different.
    • They reached toward fuller knowledge.
    • They reached toward fuller humanity.
  • Curiosity is not a flaw to manage.
    • It is a spiritual capacity to cultivate.
    • An act of courage.
  • Personally
    • Asking “Why?”
    • Asking “What if?”
    • Asking “I wonder…”
    • These questions lead to growth.
  • As a community
    • Curiosity leads to adaptability.
    • It asks:
      • What is actually needed here?
      • Rather than, “What have we always done?”
  • For the world
    • You cannot build a world that doesn’t yet exist…
      • Without first imagining it.
  • Today we honor the mothers of our human story.
    • Eve gave us the courage to ask what is right.
    • Pandora gave us hope that asking is worthwhile.
    • Persephone gave us the authority that comes from having journeyed into darkness and returned.
    • Curiosity is their inheritance to us.
  • Go into the world…
    • Not because curiosity is safe.
    • But because it is sacred.
    • Dare to know.