Do you know what I know?

For bet­ter or worse I find myself con­tin­u­ally inter­ested in know­ing, not so much knowl­edge, or per­haps more specif­i­cally I guess I am inter­ested in knowl­edge about know­ing (epis­te­mol­ogy to drop the 10 dol­lar term). Just how is it that we know some­thing to be true, or come to any sort of knowl­edge for that mat­ter. Lis­ten­ing to a church Christ­mas con­cert this year two lines sud­denly entered my mind as though encoun­ter­ing them for the first time,

Said the shep­herd boy to the mighty king,

Do you know what I know?

The words rushed through me leav­ing in their wake wave after wave of emo­tion. Or maybe they dropped on me like stone, like a liv­ing stone on my stag­nant sense of knowl­edge and drove the waves out­ward, out to the ends, to sur­face of my body that I trust to sense and know the world around me. When waves first peaked they were numb­ing leav­ing room for no other thoughts or think­ing and as the waves ebbed my returned feel­ings kept telling me, “But the king has access to knowl­edge.” What can be known the king is able to know. Now I may not be an explicit fan of the king but if there is some­thing to be known the king can extend the reach of his hand to grasp and acquire it. And what of the rhetor­i­cal flaunt that the shep­herd boy adds,

In your palace walls mighty king,

Do you know what I know?

No I try not to fly the ban­ner of the king but the truth is that I am on the side of the king. Per­haps I posi­tion myself as the king or pros­trate myself before kings. This is true because of how these lines offended me deeply, uncon­sciously. I have been build­ing palace walls in my days even in my sleep.  God for­give me.

There is more than one know­ing. There are thrones of knowl­edge. But there is also know­ing that is no knowledge.

And the shep­herd boy did not cre­ate his own know­ing. His know­ing was born of see­ing and hearing.

Do you see what I see?

Do you hear what I hear?

In this already estab­lished new year may we be granted eyes to see and ears to hear a knowl­edge drift­ing some­times rush­ing low to the ground steal­ing past palace walls fill­ing the hearts and minds of those with­out king or coun­try. For the Gospel is a refugee knowl­edge or maybe a refugee of knowl­edge tented under the stars and in touch with the wind.