How Can I Find God?
There was once a young boy who would wander in the woods. His father became concerned as he went deeper and deeper into the forest each time, so one day he said to the boy, “I notice that every day you walk into the woods. Why do you go there?”
The boy replied, “I go there to find God.”
“That’s wonderful. But don’t you know that God is the same everywhere?”
“Yes,” the boy answered, “but I am not.”*
In a handful of words, this Hasidic tale captures one essential key to the great quest for God—that while God is everywhere, God is best encountered in a particular place. The master teachers of prayer usually direct us to return to the same place, every day. The same chair by the window, the same mat on the floor, or as in the case of the boy, the same path in the woods. God may be everywhere, the boy realizes, “but I am not.” He must be faithful to one particular spot, and for him the woods work.
The crucial thing is to find that one particular place. It seems incongruous that Israel’s everywhere-God nevertheless chooses to dwell first in a tabernacle, then a temple. Here, Yahweh says, here is where I will meet you. And every Christmas, Christians are astonished that the God of galaxies should choose this woman’s womb, should become one peculiar man.
Once we are onto this divine penchant, our search narrows. Now we’re looking in plain places, small corners, for unremarkable things. If Jacob, on the morning after his ladder dream, can point to the nameless spot on which he slept, head pillowed on a rock, and say, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven” (Gen. 28:17), then every patch of Earth, every stone is sanctified.
And now we are back to where we began. Everywhere is the gate of heaven, but you and I must find the one place that somehow calls to us, and go there day after day.
*Thanks to my colleague Rabbi Geoffrey A. Mitelman for this story. Sinai and Synapses, “The Space in Between,” February 23, 2023.
Question for Today:
How can I find God?
Where have I felt God’s presence at some point in my life, and what keeps me from returning there today?
Question #6 “How Can We Get Beyond the Bitterness and Division In Our World?” comes Tuesday March 7.
My place is in my office, on the floor, on the mat, with headhphones on, listening to three hymns: God Be in My Head, The Prayer of St. Patrick, and The Prayer of St. Francis (Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace…”).
There’s more practice after that but that’s where it begins.
Like the boy I find God in the woods, Woodland Park to be exact, with my 3 dogs and my 2 year old Kyle. Everytime the dogs go there it’s like they’ve never been there before and I kinda feel the same way. Watching my 2 year old navigate the rocks and make progress each trip gives me belief in a Power greater than myself. I often see my Rector there with his dog Beckett so I can’t be too far off!
On the 31st of December 1984 I met Janice Norton at a New Years Eve party. We dated for a while, became good friends and I ended up renting one of the two apartments that she was renting in the five story apartment building at the corner of Hawthorne and SE 50th. She used the second apartment (two floors above her residence) more for storage than anything else, but there was plenty of room for me to make it a comfortable place to call home for the few months I needed. The apartment was located on the fourth floor and had a large window that faced West. This window, being at the elevation it was, offered an incredible view of the west hills of Portland; the backdrop of downtown’s skyscrapers positioned just across the Willamette river. On those rare mornings when the sunrise wasn’t obscured by the clouds, the breaking light of day would find every reflective surface located throughout the west hills, causing those hills to appear as mounds of glittering jewels. It was quite a spectacle to wake up to!
One morning while sitting in front of this window, focusing my view into the seemingly limitless sky above and beyond the west hills, I had a revelation about “God.” I went past all the images, symbols and concepts that the world presented as God and experienced the ineffable. What was not ineffable, though, and was the flip side of this experience, was the realization that whatever thoughts or fears I had ever had over the years about the concept of “hell” that my exposure to religion had indoctrinated me with…well, those thoughts and fears were misplaced. In other words, I realized I never had to worry or be concerned about going to hell because I was already there. Oops, I have digressed.
Note: prior to this incident, the idea of God had always been an enigma with me and I had no definitive answer to the question, does God exist? After this incident, I knew “God” did exist but whatever God was, it was beyond description or explanation. Through symbols, allegories, metaphors, and analogies we can point to God but knowing God is an experience. The metaphor that I use to point to God is space for where is space not and what other than space contains all that I perceive?
Thanks for this, Monte—we should seek the God beyond “God,” whatever that is for us. It’s different for everyone, but, like you, most of us got an image of God that was just too small. Thanks for telling us your story.