is yellow square or round?

 Whoever said there is no such thing as a dumb question was just plain wrong.  There are dumb questions.  
At my new job I am surrounded by brilliant people and I often feel very out of place.  Being new, I have to work very hard to formulate my questions in a way that still gives the impression I have things under control, and at the same time does not give it away that sometimes I really have no idea what is going on.  My very first week, I received an email more or less asking for a personnel list.  There was one position I just could not figure out who the contact person was, no matter how many documents I looked through.  Finally as a last resort, I knocked on a door and asked.  The look I got confirmed my instinct.  This was a dumb question.  The position I couldn't figure out was my own.  


It has been a steep learning curve.


As I continue to deal with this issue, formulating questions in the right way, it reminded me of a book I finished a couple months ago by C.S. Lewis.  I've actually never read any of his popular books (yet), but I picked this one up because it was short and I found the topic compelling.  The book is called "A Grief Observed" and is basically a compilation of his journal writings and thoughts following the death of his wife due to cancer.  I really like learning about grief (I'm currently reading Sunset by S. Michael Wilcox -- same topic, same sniffling coming from our bedroom where I seclude myself), so I was hooked from the get-go.  Parts of the book made me laugh out loud, others were truly heart-wrenching, and the majority of the book made me sit back and just say, "Wow."  

“Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask - half our great theological and metaphysical problems - are like that.” 

This quote really made me think about my own communications with God, especially when I ask Him for something and it appears that He never answers.  What if sometimes my questions are unanswerable because to Him, someone who knows the big picture and always has my best interests in mind, they just don't make sense?  Does God also want to bang His head against a wall every time I ask about something totally unreasonable?

My sophomore year in high school, I was taking an early morning seminary class (a religious class LDS teenagers in my geographical area participate in at six in the morning every weekday, studying a different canon of scripture each year) and we were learning about the children of Israel and their 40 years wandering in the wilderness.  Exasperated, I finally asked my teacher, "Why don't they just listen?  Can't they just get it the first time?"  My sweet, brilliant teacher smiled and simply responded, "How do you think they compare to us?"  

Perhaps God echoes my sentiment as I repeat to myself week after week, "Read the protocol."