“Are You Sure?”

Mary Lou Kownacki, a Benedictine nun with a gift for holy mischief, tells one of my favorite stories.

A poet-mystic, known for his deep piety, was often asked the secret of his holiness. His answer was always the same:
“I know what is in the Bible.”

One day a new disciple asked the obvious question:
“Well then… what is in the Bible?”

The poet-mystic smiled.
“In the Bible,” he said, “there are two pressed flowers… and a letter from my friend Jonathan.”

I love how this answer gently undoes our grip on certainty. It reminds me that truth is not always found in tidy explanations or well-rehearsed doctrines, but in the tender, ordinary things that carry love across time.

Thich Nhat Hanh once wrote:

“Are you sure? Are you sure of your perceptions? Most of our suffering comes from wrong perceptions.”

Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo puts it another way:

“We see the world not as it is, but as we are.”

So perhaps the next time we are ready to speak with certainty—about immigrants, the poor, Black and brown bodies, or anyone whose truth is different from our own—we might pause.

Breathe.
Ask quietly, Am I sure?

Maybe that question belongs in every Bible—tucked like a pressed flower, a letter from a friend, a reminder that love is always more important than being right.