Practicing Curiosity

 This week in our Connection: The Heart and Art of Faith series, Maddie talked about curiosity—what it looks like to really notice another person, to ask one more question, and to move from surface-level interaction into deeper connection.

As we saw in the Song of Songs, love often begins with attention. The lovers in the poem slow down, delight in each other, and linger long enough to truly see one another. And that same posture—of curiosity, presence, and openness—is something we can begin to practice in our everyday relationships.

So this week, instead of just one resource, we wanted to offer a few that can help you put curiosity into practice.

1. Watch: 10 Ways to Have a Better Conversation – Celeste Headlee

This week’s sermon referenced a TED Talk by journalist Celeste Headlee, and it’s well worth watching in full.

In this talk, Headlee offers simple but surprisingly challenging practices for better conversations:

• Don’t multitask
• Ask open-ended questions
• Don’t equate your experience with someone else’s
• And most importantly—listen to understand, not just to respond

What’s powerful about this talk is how practical it is. These aren’t abstract ideas—they’re small shifts you can try immediately in your next conversation.

Try this: Before your next conversation, pick just one of her suggestions and focus on practicing it.

2. Read: Curious Minds: The Power of Connection – Dani Bassett & Perry Zurn

In the sermon, Maddie also talked about how curiosity isn’t just a personality trait—it’s something built into us. It’s part of how we move toward one another.

Bassett and Zurn describe curiosity not just as information-seeking, but as a force of connection—something that draws us out of ourselves and toward other people.

They also name different “styles” of curiosity:

• Hunters (focused, problem-solving curiosity)
• Busybodies (broad, exploratory curiosity)
• Dancers (relational, responsive curiosity)

Reading even a short summary of their work can help you notice: What kind of curiosity comes most naturally to me? And how might I grow in other ways of being curious?

3. Practice: Three Questions to Go Deeper

Sometimes the hardest part of curiosity is simply knowing what to ask.

Here are three questions you can try this week—whether with a friend, coworker, or someone at church:

• What’s been taking up most of your mental energy lately?
• What’s something you’ve been thinking about a lot recently?
• What’s been bringing you joy these days?

These kinds of questions open the door to stories, not just updates.

Try this: Choose one person this week and ask one of these questions. Notice what happens.

4. Learn: More about Song of Songs!

If you're interested in going deeper into the biblical text we covered this week, this article offers a more in depth examination of Song of Songs and the ways in which it's been read as a love poem throughout history. The poem invites us to reclaim attentive love as something to be proud of rather than something to be ashamed of.