“I laugh when I hear that the fish in the sea is thirsty,

You do not understand that what is most alive of all is inside your own home

So, you go about from one holy city to the next with a confused look. 

Kabir will tell you the truth:

Go wherever you like, to Calcutta or Tibet,

If you do not understand where your soul is hidden

For you the world will never be real.”

-Kabir, 15th century Indian saint, who strongly inspired Bhakti Hindus, Sufi Muslims, and Sikhs. 

“My heart is restless,” St. Augustine prayed to God, “until it finds its rest in You.”

God, Augustine teaches, is “more intimate to me than my inmost self.”

Most of us, I think it’s safe to say, have at some point felt this restlessness. For some this was an acute crisis. For some it may be a constant background ache. 

A deep longing, a wide yearning, perhaps even a vast emptiness within, that calls out for some as yet elusive fulfillment.  

This restlessness often leads to searching in one form or another. This searching can lead to chasing after those who say, “Here it is!” or “Look, Over here!” 

Some of us may be well acquainted with what it is like to go about “from one holy city to the next with a confused look,” or from this church to that temple, from this teacher to that teaching promising the solution. And then we find ourselves dissatisfied again. Demoralized. Let down. Cynical.  

Have you ever felt this restlessness of the lost, the aimlessness of those who drift and spin?

Or have you just felt stuck in your soul? Your deepest needs unmet, yet with nowhere else to go?  Or have you pushed this restlessness away, blocked your ears to its call, perhaps fearing the loss of security it may lead us to, and so fearing being honest about the yearning in your soul?

This restlessness is in fact nothing to be afraid of. 

The restlessness itself is often necessary. It can be a signal to us of our alienation from our Creator, from our Sacred Source, our alienation from the true nature of ourselves and of one another. 

It can let us know we’ve gone astray somehow. It can be a signal to us that we’re looking for love in all the wrong places. Restlessness can be the stirrings of an awakening.

The question is, what to do next? 

As we heard in these teachings from Jesus and Kabir we must beware of all the snares set around false idols. History is full of the slick marketing campaigns of those who seek to capitalize on our spiritual longings. And we all have the tendency to get caught up in endless webs of our own fantasies, especially when an idea as powerful as “God” is involved.  

If we follow the guidance of Jesus, which I recommend, our longing for God will not lead us into the trap of someone else’s ego, or into the trap of our own (or both as it often is). Rather it will lead us to a transformation through universal love. The Way of Jesus leads us to practice love for one another in compassionate service, in acts of mercy, in acts of justice, in acts of prayer. These are practices of self-emptying that lead us to realize, little by little, that we are channels of love for God and channels of love from God. When we follow Jesus, we are led through an emptying of the self that leads to an opening of the self to receive the overabundant love of God. We fill to overflowing. 

We discover we can simply participate in the ceaseless presence of God’s grace. 

Jesus said: “If those who lead you proclaim to you: ‘The realm is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will enter before you. If they proclaim to you: ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will enter before you. Rather, the realm is within you and outside you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will realize that you are the children of the Living Abba. If, however, you do not come to know yourselves, then you dwell in poverty and you are the poverty.” – The Gospel of Thomas 3

Once Jesus  was asked by the Pharisees when the realm of God was coming, and he answered, “The realm of God does not come in a way that can be grasped. Nor will people say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the realm of God is among you.” -Gospel of Luke 17:20-21

His followers said to Jesus, “When will the Realm come?”
“It will not come by looking for it. It will not be a matter of saying, ‘Here it is!’ Or ‘Look! There it is.’ Rather the Realm of the Father is spread out upon the earth, but people don’t see it.”  – Gospel of Thomas 113

In the words of Bede Griffiths, an English Benedictine Monk, and Yogi, who led a Christian/Hindu ashram in Tamil Nadu, India: 

“I suddenly saw that all the time it was not I who had been seeking God, but God who had been seeking me. I had made myself the centre of my own existence and had my back turned to God… God had brought me to my knees and made me acknowledge my own nothingness, and out of that knowledge I had been reborn. I was no longer the centre of my life and therefore I could see God in everything.”

Or hear these words from St. Gregory of Nyssa: “God dwells in you, penetrates you yet is not confined in you.” 

Or Meister Eckhart: “The soul takes her being immediately from God: therefore God is nearer to the soul than she is to herself, and therefore God is in the ground of the soul with all the Godhead.”

Or Martin Laird: “God is too simple to be absent … God is not something we can or need to acquire.”

Or Simone Weil:
“God continually showers the fullness of God’s grace on every being in the universe. But we consent to a greater or lesser degree.”

It is the practice of love that leads us to consent. 

This is what Jesus embodied and taught:

As the Apostle Paul said, “Jesus did not regard his unity with God as reason for boasting. But rather he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.”

Jesus told his disciples:

“As God loves me, so I love you, and so you are to love one another, and to love God.”

“As you do to the least of these, you do to me.”

Jesus prayed, “The glory that you, God, have given me, I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one,I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

I will end with words from the theologian Paul Tillich, which I came across just this morning, in a post by a colleague and friend, Rev. Emily Davis:

“Nothing is demanded of you—no idea of God, and no goodness in yourselves, not your being religious, not your being Christian, not your being wise, and not your being moral. But what is demanded is only your being open and willing to accept what is given to you, the New Being, the being of love and justice and truth, as it is manifest in Him Whose yoke is easy and Whose burden is light…”

So, if you, like me, can sometimes be a thirsty fish, rejoice! 

The fish must first feel thirsty before it can delight with awareness and gratitude and grace in the fact that we are indeed surrounded and filled with our ultimate fulfillment. 

For that, my friends, I give thanks to God.

You may view livestream of the worship service in which I deliver this message, here.

Image: “Gold Fish Bowl Jump 089/365 [explore #150]” by Louish Pixelis licensed under Creative Commons