A Life of Search

D. Elton Trueblood’s little book, A Life of Search, was published by Friends United Press in 1996, two years after Elton’s death.  I underlined the following paragraph when I first read the book:  “If any one thinks that he has wisdom, the one sure truth is that he does not.  The more we advance, the more clear it is that we still have a long way to go.”  I underlined that paragraph twenty-three years ago and today I underlined it again, realizing that even all these years later I “still have a long way to go.”

Life is a journey.  If you are alive you are on this journey.  It is an inward journey (who am I and Whose am I, really?) and an outward one (who am I to be, what am I to do?).  It is a journey of search.  There is no arrival point.  The journey goes on and on as a great adventure; full of mystery, mistakes, sufferings, complaints, and wonder.

Frederick Buechner in his book, The Sacred Journey, describes this life of search:  “We search for a self to be.  We search for other selves to love.  We search for work to do.  And since even when to one degree or another we find these things, we find also that there is still something crucial missing which we have not found, we search for that unfound thing too, even though we do not know its name or where it is to be found or even if it is to be found at all.”

My experience is “that unfound thing” of which Buechner writes is also searching for us, as eager to find us as we are to find this “unfound.”  Rufus Jones called it “The Double Search.”  Albert Schweitzer tried to explain it:  “He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, He came to those who knew Him not.  He speaks to us the same words:  ‘Follow thou me!” and sets us to tasks which He has to fulfill in our time. He commands.  And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship [company], and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.”

Life has tumbled in on me in ways I never expected, just as it has tumbled in on you and every other person in this world unexpectedly.  When we say “we are not alone,” we speak truth, for every other person keeps us company.  No human being can avoid “the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings, which they shall pass through” in what Buechner calls this “sacred journey.”  It is “sacred” in the sense that our life of search is not one-sided.  The “unfound” is seeking us with all the energy and passion with which we seek it.  Life is “an ineffable mystery” through which we learn that we are sought in the same manner in which we seek.  I “still have a long way to go” in the search, but it is a remarkable thing and a comfort to sense that the Love at the Heart of Things is also seeking me.