Have you found what you’re looking for?

“Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.”
Albert Camus

(image of a dilapidated abandoned farm house in rural west Georgia / Julie Cook / 2014)

“But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for
But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for”
Lyric refrain from the song “I still haven’t’ found what I’m looking for”
by U2

Certainly not being one to claim some sort of privileged knowledge about the inception of the 1987 song, nor of its meaning,“I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” by the Irish rock band, U2– the one thing I do know, however, is how I find the lyrics most applicable to my humble observations of the world in which we live.

My understanding is that the tune/ melody is steeped in the band’s front man Bono and lead guitarist Edge and their equal appreciation for American music genres. Bono supposedly has claimed the song to be a quasi piece of gospel mixed with a smattering of Bob Dylan influence. And who among us, of a particular age, can’t say that there isn’t a little bit of Bob Dylan, with that avant guard philosophical musical view of life of his, hiding deep down in us all?

Not that I’m a huge Bob Dylan fan by any stretch of the imagination, but the older I become, the more I find I have a deep appreciation for the method behind his madness. Bob Dylan can write a mean set of lyrics and he is tremendously musically gifted, despite the fact that I never thought he could sing. That garbled, almost unintelligible, nasal voice of his with his folksy bluesy sound was, when I was younger, not my cup of tea. I was a pure member of Beatle Mania coupled by a love of early Motown. Little did I know, at the time, of the tremendous impact Bob Dylan had had on the lives of those musicians whom I loved!

And so it goes as new generations of music makers continue to tap into and weave the poetic mastery of Bob Dylan into their own current take on music–with the boys from Dublin being no exception.

But back to the song. . .

As I look out upon a landscape, which seems to be more like the song Helter Skelter rather than the peace and tranquility of songs such as What a Wonderful World, I am almost overwhelmed by the madness.
Life is indeed colorful.
Life is indeed loud.

Life is full of the flashy gadgetry of the off the chart growth and hunger for all things electronic with the roots deep in technology, which this brave new world of ours seems to crave. Demand can’t keep up with the insatiable appetite. That new IPhone of yours, the one you just bought last month, its already obsolete as a new one will be out shortly—oh the frustration of keeping up!

We are now living in a country where more people currently live in large urban centers rather than the rural countryside. Songs from distant childhoods such as “This Land is Your Land” once painted a picture of a quilted country with a sweeping landscape which was stitched together by a population of residence spread out far and wide, dotting the land from coast to coast. Today it seems that most of those dots, that population of ours, is crammed in on either coast with a few remaining clusters bridging the gaping empty landscape in-between.

Our news, which is really no longer news but rather extensions of what we consider entertainment, is laced with so many stories of those who have fallen from grace it’s almost difficult to keep up. “Stars,” whose lives are splashed across our eyeballs, often against our will, along with their endeavors and exploits appear on almost every magazine cover in grocery stores, drug stores, television programs, computer screens, commercials, movie screens and even the air waves. We couldn’t escape them if we wanted to. Arrests, heroin overdoses, sex scandals, explosive public temper tantrums, bad boy and bad girl behavior run amuck—the list goes on and on.

My question: why does any of this, of what those folks do, matter to me?

Interlace Hollywood with our politicians and Government officials, whose behavior is proving equally as disturbing from the lurid sexting scandals, numerous affairs, drugs, alcohol, bribery, chronic pleading of the 5th. . .as I suppose we could say it all boils down to a sick sort of entertainment.

I for one, however, find it all terribly sad.

It seems as if Society, as a whole, is the one singing the lyrics of U2’s song— as it is our overall Society which seems to be so empty and in search of something that it just can’t seem to find.

Fulfillment
Contentment
Security
Love
Happiness
Acceptance
Success

Those seem to be the key words in which most people, famous or not, continually seek. And the seeking seems to be at a non stop pace with many of the end results coming up empty.

The drugs don’t work.
The sex doesn’t work.
The arrests don’t help.
The re-hab doesn’t help.
The endless affairs don’t work
The insatiable shopping and buying doesn’t work
The binge eating and drinking doesn’t work
The obsession with weight and looks don’t work.
The constant quest for youth doesn’t work.
The anger, the resentment, the hatred, the denial, the isolation. . .none of it works.

So everyone goes on singing.
“I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”

There is but one thing that works.
It will, however, require a great deal from an individual.
It requires a death.
It is not a physical death per se.
But it is a dying of self.

Giving up me in order to gain a life lived with the Creator of the Universe.
Giving up me to have a relationship with an only Son who died so I could have that relationship.
Giving up me to receive a mystical gift of Grace known as the Holy Spirit.
That is the only thing that will work.

But nobody seems too interested in hearing that.
Dying unto self just doesn’t seem nearly as exciting as the news these days.

My favorite psalm—Psalm 139: 1-18– Words which humble me, reassure me, touch me deeply— especially as an adopted child who knows not form whence I come. . .

O Lord, You have searched me and known me.
You know my sitting down and my rising up;
You understand my thought afar off.
You comprehend my path and my lying down,
And are acquainted with all my ways.
For there is not a word on my tongue,
But behold, O Lord, You know it altogether.
You have hedged me behind and before,
And laid Your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
It is high, I cannot attain it.
Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
If I ascend into heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.
If I take the wings of the morning,
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there Your hand shall lead me,
And Your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall fall on me,”
Even the night shall be light about me;
Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You,
But the night shines as the day;
The darkness and the light are both alike to You.
For You formed my inward parts;
You covered me in my mother’s womb.
I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Marvelous are Your works,
And that my soul knows very well.
My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
And in Your book they all were written,
The days fashioned for me,
When as yet there were none of them.
How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!
How great is the sum of them!
If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand;
When I awake, I am still with You.

These feet were made for Love

We live in a society that is obsessed with the pursuit of perpetual youth and beauty. We spend thousands of dollars for things to make us have less wrinkles, less brown spots, less pounds, less grey, more hair, bigger eyes, brighter smiles, longer nails, prettier nails, prettier toes, less sags, less bags…. that list goes on and on into the next list of the thousands of dollars spent on cosmetic treatments— the cosmetic augmentation, not because of a medical need such as a breast reconstruction due to a battle with cancer, but rather simply because we want to look prettier, handsomer, lighter, thinner, taller, younger……lift the eyes, the boobs, the butt, the stomach, fill in the lips, the cheeks, the calves, add the hair, smooth out the wrinkles—on and on it goes….It makes me wonder if any one is happy with themselves?

I wish things like all of that didn’t matter. I think it would make all of our lives better; we’d probably be happier and a little wealthier as we wouldn’t be throwing money to the pursuit of glamour and youth. Our society is so obsessed with the physical attributes of a person that we sometimes forget about the internal attributes—the quality of the soul and of a life well lived. Turn on any television and the reality shows, the “entertainment” news (I use the word news very loosely here), and our obsession with the Hollywood who’s who and who wore what and how did they look and oh my how they’ve gained weight…

When I was in the classroom, I kept a copy of this photograph on my classroom door. Adults are bad enough fretting over the glitzy and the glamorous—adolescents have a doubly difficult time dealing with the whole issue of the “image of self.” If you don’t understand that ask any kid who struggles with anorexia, bulimia, cutting, addictions and suicidal goals.

The photo I placed on my door was backed with a simple black sheet of mat board. I had written on the mat “these feet never complained—they just kept moving in the name of Love”
I can’t take credit for the photograph as it comes for a most wonderful book:
Works of Love are Works of Peace
Mother Teresa of Calcutta and the
Missionaries of Charity
A Photographic Record by Michael Collopy

As the kids would walk in and out of class, or the multitude of other kids just walking down the hall, many would stop to look at the picture. They stopped because the image is somewhat troubling. Teenagers aren’t the best equipped when it comes to tact—they tend to be brutally honest in their observations—there were a lot of “ooo, gross”, “man, those are some sorry looking feet”, and then there are a few things I can’t repeat (or I choose not to repeat). Many of the kids did not recognize the iconic striped white tunic. I don’t think if the image was in color, bearing the lovely blue of the stripe, that many would still recognize whom it was. That was where I came in–offering a simple answer.

The kids would ask whose feet. When I told them, that pretty much answered what I knew to be their next question…why would I have a picture of such “ugly” feet up on my door? All I had to say was “oh, those feet you ask…those are Mother Teresa’s feet.” That pretty much answered everything else. Mother Teresa is good that way.

She was 85 when that picture was taken. They are the feet of someone who didn’t care about the shiny nail polish or the latest pedicure. Nor was there any concern for the latest designer pair of shoes. There wasn’t time for such frivolous things when there were people hungry and dying that needed tending to.

I’m certain by the end of each day, Mother Teresa’s feet hurt. I’m certain that as she got up each morning and took that first step, there was pain. But in Mother Teresa’s world there simply wasn’t time to worry or bother with aching feet. She had to be about the important tasks of each new day—and that was tending to the basic needs of other human beings. No worries over fancy new shoes, no worries with whiter teeth, no worries about lifting things that are sagging or coloring things turning grey…nope, just the tending to people who are hungry, lonely, sick, dying, scared…

Maybe we’d be better off if we thought like Mother Teresa. I kind of think we would be, and maybe happier too.