I'm lookin' for my missin' piece
Hi-dee-ho, here I go
lookin' for my missin' piece
-Shel Silverstein, The Missing Piece
The nature of God is a circle
of which the center is everywhere
and the circumference is nowhere.
-St. Augustine
The Missing Piece and the Search
You know how it is: there is something missing. If you look “inside” you find a hole, that if filled could put you at rest. A great desire arises in you for this missing piece. Fifteenth century Christian mystic, St. John of the Cross called our experience of this “something missing” a “great cavern of desire,” a cavern which, he noted, cannot be filled by anything in all creation. Yet, this is something that you have to find out by yourself, so the search begins for the missing piece which you believe will bring wholeness, peace, happiness and satisfaction. You mount the watchtower – searching for your missing piece. Eyes fixed on the horizon, looking far and wide, you wait for something/someone to appear. Your life becomes a reaching for the thing, the person, the experience that will transform your life. You search and you search and you search.
There is something beautiful about this search. The search tells us that heart is alive, seeking home. Jesus was a fan of this search. Once when a rich young man came to him and asked, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”, Luke, the gospel writer, tells us that Jesus “looked at him and loved him.” Jesus recognized how the young man was reaching with all he had. And that is how it is, you reach with all you have. How to search? Here’s something that might help you on your way:
And someone asked him when the kingdom of God was coming. And he said, 'The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!” For, in fact, the kingdom of God is your midst.’
Chinese Masters called it Buddha-nature, Jesus called it the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven. We could say, “God’s realm.” What is It? The kingdom of God is something which cannot be named, grasped, explained, or imagined. Once you grab hold of it, it wiggles a bit and you find that you never had it to begin with. So, how does one search?
Maybe you search by not searching. If the realm of God is right here in your midst, and can’t be located in time and space as here or there – why look anywhere? Where would you look? under a rock? behind a tree? Maybe there is looking without grasping, a finding with no naming. A gentle awareness. We believe that sacred work is big work, loaded with effort. What if it were as simple as waking up in the morning, opening your eyes to first light as the birds sing sweetly in the trees? Tweet! Tweet!
Jesus said, that God’s realm is not coming with things that can be observed. It cannot be observed “over here” or “over there” because it is not outside any self that is searching. Nor is there an inside, a little niche where It can be found. With no inside nor outside, what is there? Just this as it is.
The kingdom of God is nowhere at all and everywhere at once. The kingdom of God is beyond inside or outside, here or there. The realm of God eludes our grasp. It just is.
There is no search at all. Nothing to search for. Nothing to find. As soon as you think you have found it, named it, grabbed hold of it, it is gone. With no thought of it – Ha! there’s God’s realm – washing the dishes, planting the garden. What the heart seeks is already present, in your midst. But even closer than that – the heart seeking is It. Oh, the missing piece? Never missing.
To Ponder:
1. When did you become aware of searching? How has that been for you?
2. What is your experience of “having it all together?” How did this come about?
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