I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For

I have always been a seeker. I have been intensely curious about all sorts of things all of my life... hence: “Curious Servant”.


When I was four I made little boats out of walnut shells, watched them float through irrigation ditches beneath orange trees in southern California. I wondered why they floated.

As my dad drove us out for frog gigging in rice paddies of northern California I watched the moon. I wondered at how it kept up with us, racing along behind trees and grain silos. Ignoring my dad’s jokes that the moon was following our pickup, I soon figured out without his help that the moon must be very distant and very large to be able to slide along with us in the distance. It was an epiphany reinforced the following year as I walked to my first grade class room, noticing the trunks of trees following along with me beyond the slats of white picket fences.

I was curious and I saw how curiosity taught me things. I kept my eyes open.

I have done all sorts of things... had all sorts of adventures... and I think curiosity was behind it all.

I’ve been scuba diving with sharks, and I’ve walked much of the John Muir Trail. I hitch hiked nearly 30,000 miles one summer in a youthful attempt to rack up miles and adventures.

Searching...

I’ve seen the serpent’s shadow slither down the ancient stone steps of Chichen Itza during the vernal equinox and I’ve wiggled through tight passages of abandoned sliver mines in the desert.

I’ve lived in an ashram, meditating for hours on end...

Always searching...

Once, when I was 18, I took a stack of books to a cave on Saddleback Mountain and read, and read, and read. Nearly three months. I read the Bible, and the Book of Mormon, and the Bhaghavad Gita, and the Upanishads. I read Patangali, and the sayings of Mao Tse Tung. I read the Autobiography of a Yogi and the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. There was the Koran, and The Lost Books of Eden, and a book on astral projection. I dove into, through, and emerged from the sayings of Confucius, the poems of Omar Kayim, and the whole silly series of Carlos Castenda. I practically memorized Ewell Gibbon’s Stalking the Wild Asparagus and Be Here Now by Ram Dass. I took along some Richard Brautigan to lighten the mood, and kept Walt Whitman and Emily Dickensen on hand.

All my life things my brothers thought uninteresting fascinated me, especially things of the spirit. Even when I was very young. While in kindergarten there was this little church in Willows, California.

I jumped up as high as I could and grabbed the rope. My five-year-old body swung the bell in the tower above me, it rang out, a satisfying throbbing ring. I imagined people all over town hearing the bell ring, telling them it was time for church. As my feet touched the floor I let go. The rope swung up, and just as the rope reached its peak I jumped even higher, making the clang even louder.

BONG, -ONG, ong, ong, o n g... (It’s time for church!)

BONG, -ONG, ong, ong, o n g... (It’s time for church!)

BONG, -ONG, ong, ong, o n g... (It’s time for church!)


That was a significant year for me spiritually, 1961.

I started school. Kindergarten was next to the city swimming pool. I learned I’m not supposed to climb the school fence and run home to tell my mom something. I learned I didn’t draw the sun right (some girl whose name I cannot recall told me so). It was supposed to be round with wiggly lines and a smile, not a brilliant yellow white orb with speckles in a pale blue sky. I learned that if you aren’t feeling well they will take your temperature in the strangest way. And I learned that God was a real part of my life.

I was so honored to ring that church bell. It was like they had chosen me to help be the voice of God, telling our town that He was here, that it was Sunday, and everyone should hurry to church and hear stories about Him.

One Sunday I saw something my mom didn’t believe. The stain glass window of Jesus holding a lamb grew fuzzy, softened, and His face turned to me and smiled. I knew I must be special. He stopped and smiled at me! I cried silently and smiled. My dad frowned.

A few weeks later there was a communion service. My mom told me I couldn’t do it yet, I was too little, I didn’t understand what communion meant.

I loved my mother, but I knew she was wrong. I knew what it was about. I knew it wasn’t just bread and juice, that it wasn’t a snack. I knew it represented something much bigger, much more important. I knew it was about how Jesus was God in the form of a man and that He had let people hurt Him, kill Him, and that the bread and juice represented Him so we could always remember what He did and that we could take part in that sacrifice. I knew He had done it for me.

But words such as sacrifice, and salvation, and communion weren’t yet a part of my vocabulary. I couldn’t tell her I understood what it was all about. For a moment I felt like arguing with her (something I never did). But I also felt, deep inside, that it was ok, that it didn’t matter. That He knew what was in my heart.

Now I am pushing fifty and I feel a stirring in my heart that is still fresh, still passionate.

I have been reading Scientific American thoroughly since 1980 and I still devour books as if they are some sort of food that sustains me. But they aren't, they don’t.

I have found something more satisfying.

I love the Lord my God with all of my heart.

When I am mindful.

What a weak man I am. I can’t seem to keep that focus.

Here’s a guy who could sit for three hours, staring at a candle flame, and he can’t be obedient to his Lord and master, fully obedient, for a single day.

Ah well.

I’m not really going to beat myself up over it. In fact, that is the point of this post. (And you thought I’d never get to it!)

I am saved. The creator of the universe has literally moved the laws of physics, moved Heaven, and moved Earth, and moved Hell, just to be reunited with beings who reject Him continually. I know this to be a truth that is clearer than simple addition. Simpler than the fact that hydrogen is abundant and rainbows are pretty. I know it to be truer than my own beating heart. I am saved. I am loved.

I feel joy that makes me dance. Truly, it does! I do this stupid little dance sometimes when I am praying on my solitary walks.

But it isn’t enough. It isn’t all that I am seeking.

For I know that the joy I feel, the thrill of loving my Lord is shallow.

I know that the grief that broke my heart in two, when I clutched my dead child from the cold metal table at Willamette Falls Hospital, is a pale emotion compared to the LIFE, the VITALITY, I will feel when my faith is sight.

I know that the love I feel for my wife, especially when she smiles, is a shadow of the happiness I will feel when I shake off this flesh, and gaze upon the splendor that my soul continuously whispers to me exists beyond the borders of this strange mortal existence.

Science has a huge blind spot. It decrees that what is true, what is real, are all the things that are measurable, repeatable, observable. But I know there are many things that are not measurable, repeatable, observable. I can feel it because there is something inside my chest, some living, flopping, twisting thing that leaps and sings and has no part of what a doctor might see if he were to spread my ribs apart and peer within.

I have been giving a lot of thought to the band U2 and there is a song that has been rolling through my mind this past week and while I have been tapping away at this keyboard.

I have climbed highest mountains
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you
Only to be with you
I have run
I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
These city walls
Only to be with you

But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for

I have kissed honey lips
Felt my healing in her fingertips
It burned like fire
This burning desire

I have spoke with the tongue of angels
I have held the hand of a devil
It was warm in the night
I was cold as a stone

But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for

I believe in the kingdom come
Then all the colors will bleed into one
Bleed into one
Well, yes I'm still running

You broke the bonds
And you loosed the chains
Carried the cross
Of my shame
Of my shame
You know I believed it

But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for
But I still haven't found what I'm looking for

I have found something wonderful

I have found the reality of the divine incarnated. I have swept that truth into my heart and into my life.

But I know that I was created, all of us were created, to sit in a garden and speak with God, spirit to spirit, fully present to each other, and that was torn apart by the selfish motives of all humans who want to have things their own way.

We can’t help it! We are mortal. We are flesh.

Adam had to flee that intense reality, the presence of the almighty God, and Moses learned he could not look upon that reality, that truth, and live.

But it won’t be that way forever. Not forever.

I still haven’t found what I am looking for...

But someday I will.










If you have lost your passion for life. If you are seeking for a truth greater than yourself, for something that will make your heart quicken more than it did when you first fell in love. You need a relationship with the creator of all things. This isn’t some pap, some sappy western myth, but a reality.

It isn’t the total package, but it is as much joy as a mortal frame can handle.