But - where should we look for God? God isn't visible to our eyes, like our neighbor watering his lawn or a sunset over the mountains. God isn't audible to our ears like the latest Adele or Carrie Underwood hit we listen to in our cars. He can't be touched or held like our lover or our warm and wiggly child or grand-child or puppy. He doesn't "taste," like pizza, burritos, lasagna, fried chicken, moussaka, sushi, or prime rib.
Yet something deep within us tells us that God has all of the goodness and delight of all of those people and things wrapped up into One - and incomprehensibly more.
Something deep within us tells us that the one we are at war with could be our friend, that starvation could end, even our starvation for peace could be satisfied, if only we could find God..... if only we could find God.
"Oh God, You are my God, for You I long!
"For You my soul is thirsting!
"My body pines for You like a dry, weary land without water!"
Where should we look? God seems separated from us, so that we talk about "God and me" and think of God as living in another far dimension, or on the other side of a worm hole.
Yet in this game of hide and seek with God, God hides in the most unlikely of places: within our souls. Our God Who is intimate love is united with our essential spiritual natures, our souls, which are who we are. "In yourself, seek Me," God says to us.
At the same time, our entire self is wrapped up in God as snugly as a stone sitting deep in the heart of the earth, continually moving deeper into the center.
"Seek yourself in Me," God says to us.
God is in us, and we are in God!
"Everyone always has been and always will be in union with God. This union is so deep and complete that seeking God must include self-knowledge, and self-knowledge must include the search for God. St. Teresa of Avila heard God's voice in prayer saying, 'Seek yourself in Me, and in yourself seek Me.'
"......God is closer to us than we are to our very selves. We are born in union with God and we 'live and move and have our being' in God throughout our lives.' (Acts 17: 28.) (Dr. Gerald G. May, M.D.)
Some people believe that God is only "with" Christians or "with" Jews" or "with" Muslims, that God is only "with" good people. Not true, according to the saints.
"Moreover this essential unity applies not just to saints or the pure of heart, not only to Christians, and not even only to human beings. To quote St. John of the Cross directly, 'To understand this union of which we speak, know that God is present in substance in each soul, even that of the greatest sinner in the world. And this kind of union always exists, in all creatures." (Dr. Gerald G. May)
So - if God actually lives inside us, why do we have to search for God?
When we search for God, what we are really doing is searching for a deeper realization of the intimacy and union with God that we already possess. And that only happens through love and when we have self-knowledge: knowing who we really are. We are born FROM love and we are born TO love. We were created because God loves us! Each one of us is a living physical expression of God's love, born with a deep longing and capacity for God's love. And the more we are intimately in tune with our loving God within us, the more God's love flows through us to touch all people and all creation.
But so often, on our search for God, we're Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places. We want love so much! We look for complete fulfillment in people and things that we CAN see and feel and grasp. We sense the god-ness or goodness in them. But everything created is impermanent.
I walk down our street, past houses that used to hold families that moved away. I look at family or parish photos and my eyes travel first to the people who've divorced or who have died. People aren't perfect. People die.
I look at my outdated computer, my outdated Word program, my outdated phone, our I Pad, my Kindle, (which is "up" to the third generation and comes in DX or DX International, whatever that means.) Today things break faster because of their complex electronics, or new generations come out, and we have been programmed or "groomed" to grow bored with what we have and to continually want something else, something newer. Sometimes relationships end as quickly as things in our lives because people are quickly bored and programmed for newness!
People and things are meant to be messengers, pointing us towards God, not little gods in themselves. All this time God is filling us with yearnings for Himself - because only God can satisfy the deepest longings of our beings. Yet we can spend so much time running away from God instead of searching for Him. We stubbornly think God can't satisfy us. Or we are afraid of the overwhelming intimacy He promises us.
One of the most famous flights from God, and God's never-ending pursuit was penned by English poet and ascetic Francis Thompson (1859 - 1907), "The Hound of Heaven." Thompson was a promising student who yearned to be a poet. He traveled to London, tried to sell his poetry without success, and was reduced to living by selling matches and newspapers. He began taking opium to help an illness and became a full-fledged addict, homeless, living under bridges. He decided to commit suicide, but was stopped by a vision of another young poet who had died a suicide a century before. A prostitute acquaintance took pity on him and let him live with her, supporting him with her earnings, but later deserted him when he became more successful, fearful of ruining his reputation. Thompson spent the rest of his life an invalid and died of tuberculosis. Thompson's poetic struggle with God has influenced numerous people over the years, including J.R.R Tolkien, Madeline L'Engle, and the Inspector Morse series on BBC.
Some of its most famous lines:
"I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown titanic glooms of chasmed fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat - and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet -
"All things betray thee, who betrayest Me."
Eventually Christ, the Hound of Heaven, says to the fleeing soul
"Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee
Save Me? Save only Me?
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms.
But just that thou mightst seek it in My arms.
All which thy child's mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home;
Rise, clasp My hand, and come!"
"You have filled my soul as with a banquet!" the psalmist sings. "My mouth shall praise You with joy!"
We can struggle away from God and then towards finding God for years, yet when we find God within ourselves, and find ourselves within God, the knowledge, the experience, comes as a sheer gift from God, Who has always pursued us. Over the years, as we sense our oneness with God more and more deeply, it's nothing we have accomplished. God has accomplished it in us and for us. We have awakened, but it can feel as if we have finally found God and God has awakened in us. St. John of the Cross writes
How gently and lovingly
You wake in my heart
where in secret You dwell alone;
and in Your sweet breathing,
filled with good and glory,
how tenderly You swell my heart with love.
Yes, our life is both an escape from and a search for God. What an amazing surprise when we find God back where we started, - inside our selves, united to our souls. God has taken us on the long way home, but we're home at last.