Church youth groups are known to play "sardines" in which 1 person hides somewhere in the church building and the others all try and find them. When the hider is found, the seeker quietly joins them until everyone is in the hiding place together, all squished together like "sardines".
For the Morning Office I use For All The Saints: A Prayer Book For and By the Church, which contains the Daily Office readings as well as a writing each day from a theologian or saint or some such. (For the Daily Office prayers...Matins, noon, Vespers and Compline, I use The Divine Hours). Today's Gospel is the Samaritan woman at the well, which is a favorite of mine, although I have to admit, meeting someone at the water fountain who "told me everything I did" might be kind of freaky and a bit humiliating (and I imagine rather time consuming), but I digress. The extra-Biblical writing from today was from some guy named Fulton J. Sheen. His take on the Gospel text is the worst I've encountered, but what really was creepy was his assertion that "There are only two classes of people in the world - those who have found God and those who are looking for Him." So I guess God is hiding in the church building and there are those who have found him and those who are looking for him. If that's the case, I'd rather be the latter than the former. I'm still looking and part of that looking is proclaiming my experiences of God. If "finding God" implies then that I 'll be pressed up against a group of smug people who have also "found Him", then I'd rather keep looking, thanks. It seems a bit more satisfying.
Having said that I must admit that I love hearing of and telling personal experiences of God, which I believe are not only possible but transformative, both personally and globally. It's just that believing you've arrived at the final destination "God" is an illusion and a dangerous one. For me it doesn't work like that.
I'm not sure finding must necessarily mean to stop looking. As one who have come to faith in adult years, I must agree with you and say that my searching continues and I continually find more and more, but the searching has changed from a searching for God to a searching in God, and that is a major difference.
Posted by: Pastor Astor | January 14, 2007 at 06:35 AM
PA,
I like that distinction of "searching in God" thank you.
Posted by: Nadia | January 15, 2007 at 05:54 AM
Fulton J. was the 1950s Catholic version of a televangelist. He sat, in full episcopal robes, pectoral cross and biretta, and declaimed on topics for TV. I am not surprised his theology is questionable; his show was one of the few my parents did not feel was communist.
Posted by: terri c | January 15, 2007 at 09:00 AM
Terri - you are once again a very useful source of information. Oh the derth of un-communist television programing in the 1950's! The list of God-forsaken red commie bastards is too long to print but certainly includes: Leave it to Beaver, Ozzie and Harriet, The Lone Ranger...
Posted by: Nadia | January 15, 2007 at 04:40 PM
Yes, indeed. I think that "Gene Autry" was non-Communist at least for awhile, but all Warner Bros. cartoons were suspect at our house. Paranoia can be fun. Better be dead than Red, you know.
Posted by: terri c | January 16, 2007 at 09:40 AM