Seeking and being found
All our searching is our response to the Light within
The desire for something deeper in life, for a meaning that seems to be elusive or absent, is a precious opportunity. It is an invitation to discover a purpose and an identity that is more than the stories we have told ourselves.
This is rarely a comfortable place to be. It often starts with a sense of absence and emptiness; of meaninglessness, anxiety or dread. All of this is a gift. This is where desire begins, in the absence of the beloved. The desire for God, the hollowness that cries out to be filled, is already the activity of the Spirit within us, refusing to be satisfied with distractions, and drawing us to itself. It is the Light itself, showing us our condition and planting the seeds of desire within us for a deeper and more expansive life.
When the possibility of a meaningful life feels most distant, when we suffer a sense of isolation from every possibility of goodness in the world, this may be the beginning of a process of inner transformation.
Earlier generations of Quakers often described their times of desolation as the Light began its transformative work within them. In his Journal, John Woolman describes a period of severe physical and mental suffering as a teenager:
“then did darkness, horror, and amazement with full force seize me, even when my pain and distress of body were very great. I thought it would have been better for me never to have had being, than to see the day which I now saw. I was filled with confusion, and in great affliction, both of mind and body, I lay and bewailed myself… At length that word which is as a fire and a hammer broke and dissolved my rebellious heart; my cries were put up in contrition; and in the multitude of His mercies I found inward relief, and a close engagement that if He was pleased to restore my health I might walk humbly before Him.”
(Journal of John Woolman, 1774)
Some years later, he reflected on the inward changes that had been brought about within him:
“While I silently ponder on that change wrought in me, I find no language equal to convey to another a clear idea of it. I looked upon the works of God in this visible creation, and an awfulness covered me. My heart was tender and often contrite, and universal love to my fellow creatures increased in me. This will be understood by such as have trodden in the same path.”
I went through a similar passage of suffering and seeking through most of my 20s, which I was only later able to recognise as part of the Spirit’s activity within me. I know it feels like being utterly empty and alone. But it is a work of emptying to prepare us to receive the seed of new life. God is seeking each of us, and all of our searching and wanting is the response of the Light within us, drawing us towards a new relationship with the divine centre of all things. In the words of Thomas Kelly:
In this humanistic age we suppose man is the initiator and God is the responder. But the living Christ within us is the initiator and we are the responders. God the Lover, the accuser, the revealer of light and darkness presses within us. ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock.’ And all our apparent initiative is already a response, a testimonial to His secret presence and working within us.
(Thomas R Kelly, 1941, in Quaker faith & practice 2:10)