The Journey Within

In the Confessions of Augustine we read: Too late have I loved you, oh beauty ever ancient, ever new! Too late I have loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you.

Most of our search for happiness happens outside, in the realm of the tangible, the tactile, the possessable.  And still, to be most productive, even in a material way, we must come to terms with our inner self. It is an accepted fact even in the corporate world, that to be at your best, you must first attain peace within.

Our turning inward also has its dangers: narcissism and self-absorption always lurk along our desire for peace. For peace cannot be sought out for itself alone. And yet, there it too much truth in Augustine's powerful words to consider the search inward totally vain and futile. There is an inward path that leads  to God, the God within our soul, the God whose image we are made. It is our life's work to avoid the dangers accompanying that search, through discerning that path, of repeatedly seeking it, of openness to the wrong so that we can turn yet again to that which gives us light and life.

Finding God requires an inward, serious, deliberate search within the soul. To concentrate on externals, to seek our fulfillment in the tangible is to miss another whole side of life, that of the spiritual. And wouldn't it be sad if we too had to say, "Too late have I loved you...."