Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast. I'm Emanuel Von Lee, executive editor of Emergence Magazine.

In each issue, we feature in-depth interviews, narrated essays, and stories, exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality.

Joy culture, and spirituality. George Prochnick is the author of In Pursuit of Silence,

Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise,

and The Impossible Exile, Stefan's Weig at the End of the World,

which received a National Jewish Book Award for

biography. In his essay, the religious value of the unknown, George reflects on the tenuousness

of this moment in time when the fate of societies, governments, and our very planet seem to hang

in the balance, and how these conditions of uncertainty can lead to despair.

Tracing the teachings of unknowing that lie at the heart of Jewish mysticism, he presents

the possibility that uncertainty is a form of faith and hope.

One. One

We long for certainty.

Society engrains the wish, and our fear of its not being answered can feed upon itself

until the ground beneath our feet dissolves.

Religious faith rushes in to fill that yearning, like water descending a sheer incline,

until all emptiness is gone, and some final equilibrium is reached.

Insecurity plays the role of gravity in the realm of spirituality,

drawing us towards belief.

The promise of a haven where that force no longer operates,

freefall replaced by an encompassing embrace.

In the absence of that certainty, where are we?

...