The Hound of Heaven seeks us

The journey is anything but straightforward

Often we see our spiritual journey as a "following" of Christ. Even the scriptures quote Jesus as inviting others to "follow me." But in reality, it is Jesus who follows us, who seeks us out, who is ever attentive to us, even when we are unaware.

This thought was captured by Francis Thompson back in the early 1900s when he wrote The Hound of Heaven. Thompson begins his work with:

I FLED Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.	5
Up vistaed hopes I sped;

Thompson is admitting the many ways we flee from God. Most of us are hardly aware of these flights. We usually are focused on other things, the things that spell success for us, or happiness, or contentment. We are not actually running from God. We are just trying to follow a path that seems right for us.

But Thompson questions this path. He suggests that in reality, we flee God when we fail to make God the center of our search.

The wonderful part of Thompson's poem is not his realization of flight, but the realization that God was hounding him:

Still with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
Came on the following Feet,

I find it a comforting thought that no matter how we screw up or where our pursuit takes us, we have Someone following us, not seeking to destroy or even condemn us, but to save.

What are the implications of this hounding? The Divine Being follows us so that when we realize our journey has not brought fulfillment or happiness, we don't have to walk all the way back to the beginning of our search and start all over again. All we have to do is turn around. And when we turn, we find the Divine Hound who has followed close behind, who in effect says:

Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save Me, save only Me?	170
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might’st seek it in My arms.

For the Divine Being would not have our searching be in vain. God only wants that we should make our search in Presence. And once we realize that we do not need to compartmentalize our life, with the Divine Being on one side and success and personal identity on the other, we can stop fleeing. For both can be found in the Arms of the One who cares.  And if we seek our future this way, there is no telling what we will find.

Being found by Someone

Transformation. It's the goal of any human being who desires more. For those seeking a spiritual life, it means changing from what we are to something better, something deeper, in one word, someone. James Alison calls such transcendence a "falling into" or an "undergoing of God". And Richard Rohr says it happens to us rather than we make it happen.

For anyone who is not familiar with Richard Rohr, I encourage you to read his works or subscribe to his daily reads. He offers rich, deep, spiritual insight that is astonishing. In his latest book, "The Naked Now" he writes When you joyfully surrender to God...you seldom have the feeling you have found anything. It feels much more like Someone found you!

I would dare to say, this is the difference between those whose spirituality consists of rituals and obligations, and those who seek because they realize the one we are seeking is good. In one, we justify ourselves by works. In the other, we are justified by the one who saves.

Francis Thompson said it years ago in his now famous poem, the Hound of Heaven:

Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught," He said,
"And human love needs human meriting,
                How hast thou merited--
Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot?
                Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee
                Save Me, save only Me?
All which I took from thee I did but take,
                Not for thy harms.
But just that thou might'st seek it in my arms.