I searched for God among the throes of our best theological debates.

I searched for God in the well worn pews nestled inside churches.

I searched for God in the dog eared pages of my mother’s bible.

I searched for God in the quiet.

I searched for God in the loud.

I searched for him in the seen and in the unseen.

I searched for God in the foothills of mountains and in the lullaby warble of streams.

I prayed and cried.

I pushed my weary feet toward something I could not see but hoped was there.

I paused, caught my breath.  I looked up and around.

I searched for God in the stars.

And in a moment of panic, thinking I’d missed him, I turned and looked behind.

I searched for God in the kicked up gravel and broken sticks littered on the path leading me here.

I prayed and considered; I sought the Lord in my future.

I backtracked and gathered his holy clues from my past.

I searched for God in Dylan’s voice and Whitman’s words.

I searched for God along the spines of books and in the pages of tales.

My whole life is an ache and a searching for an elusive holy light.

I see it shining upon the rock before me.

I reach with trembling fingers and in an instant its replaced by shadow.

I searched for God in solitude.

You come to me with your bibles and your pamphlets.

Have you found God?  You ask me.

I look to you and ask the same.

Have you?

Have you found him amidst all your searching, all your crying?  Have you found him in the ache, the sorrow, the joy and the full breath experience of beauty?

Did you find him in the way she smelled when she died?  Did you find him in the way you miss them so much it hurts inside like a knot, growing, tensing?

Did you find him in the way the world fell apart in that moment?  Or did you find him in the moment their smile brought it back together?

Oh my friend.

Was it the daffodils or was it the smoke stench rubble?  Was it the rainbows or was it the rain?  Was it in the thunder that roared about you or in the quiet pelt of a raindrop against glass?

Was it in the end or was it in the beginning?

You ask if I have found him as if you already have; you wait for my fingertips to touch holiness as if you’ve already dipped your hand into heaven.

You pressure my toes to touch glory as if you’ve been fully immersed in it.

I suck God out of raindrops while you drown in oceans.

And you ask me if I’ve found him.

I quiver,  shiver in the cold.

I turn to you and see your face through the rain between us.

Have you?

You tell me to search for him; to seek him, pursue him.

And not once did you tell me that he searched for me.

He searched for me under the carnage of our best theological debates.

He sat beside me in the well worn pews nestled inside churches.

He spoke to me from the dog eared pages of my mother’s bible.

He held me in the quiet.

He anchored me in the loud.

He searched for me in the midst of the seen and the unseen.

He called to me in the foothills of mountains and sang to me in the lullaby warble of streams.

He winked at me through the stars.

He held my hand down the path.

He wrote my future and brushed off the clues in my past.

He unraveled beauty in the voice of Dylan and the words of Whitman.

He spoke to me through the spines of books and read to me through the pages of tales.

He is the holy light that warms me and the shadow shade that cools me.

He held me in the still.

He knew her smell.  He knows the ache.  He was stirred by the sound of my world crashing; he was in the smile that repaired it.

His love whispers through daffodils and roars through thunder.

You ask me if I’ve found him.

And you never once told me he found me.