January 13, 2003
CYBERCOLUMN:
I've been searching
___By Berry D. Simpson
___When I was a senior in high school, my favorite rock and roll band, Chicago, came out with a song titled, "I've Been Searching," written by James Pankow (the trombone player, naturally). I was very attached to that song back then, and even today the lyrics often haunt me.
___ There's a strange new light in my eyes;
___ Things I've never known
___ Changing my life, changing me.
___ I've been searching so long
___ To find an answer,
___I was 17 when I first heard that song, and the notion of a lifelong search for meaning was way too deep for me. It was the sort of thing hippies did to avoid reality, not what pre-engineering students did to prepare for the future. I suspect my attachment to the song was based on teenaged restlessness rather than a search for meaning.
BERRY D. SIMPSON
___Yet nowadays I look at my life and realize I have been searching for something all this time. I feel an unmistakable pull, like a rope tugging me along, a constant ambient tension, a continuous draw along some path. As I've gotten older, I may think less in terms of searching (motivated, directed, and evaluated by me) and more in terms of finding my calling (given by God), but the pull has been with me all the time.
___ Also, as I've gotten older, I've realized that I'm not alone in this searching business. As a teenager, I thought I was the only one in the whole wide world who felt like a searcher (well, me and James Pankow), but I know it is more universal than that.
___ Recently, I was browsing the magazines at the Midland County Library, and on the cover of Utne Reader (typically much too liberal for me) I saw this title: "Who are you really? Listen to the call of your soul and change your life." The author, Pythia Pea, wrote, "Beneath the everyday struggle of life, we all yearn for a clear sense of calling that will order the elements of our lives into a coherent and satisfying whole." She went on to quote Caroline Myss, a "healer," who said she was more frequently asked to help people find their purpose in life than to counsel them on their illnesses. (That's true for me. I pray more about finding God's calling and direction than about physical healing or specific problem-solving.)
___Frederick Buechner described our lives as sacred journeys. He wrote: "We search for a self to be. We search for other selves to love. We search for work to do. We search for that unfound thing too, even though we do not know its name or where it is to be found or even if it is to be found at all."
___I used to think that one day I'd finally arrive at the end my search and settle in. After sufficient time and planning and maturity, after all the puzzle pieces fell into place—the right job, right house, right civic obligations, right relationship with God—I could finally relax into my life in peaceful satisfaction.
___It hasn't worked out that way. Instead, the more attention I pay to life, the more tension I feel. Not tension as in high stress, but tension as in constant tugging to find the mystery of life. And the truth is, I've actually learned to enjoy that tension. Knowing that I'll always be searching, I'll never find the one final correct answer, takes off the pressure to get it exactly right. And besides, I don't want to reach a final resting place (what a scary phrase) and relax. I want to learn more, grow more, experience more, love more, believe more. I don't want to settle in.
___And then I read an article in the Dallas Morning News about people with unusual jobs, like Veronica who teaches men how to cross-dress, or George who extracts snake venom. The worst example was Betty, who sniffs armpits for a research laboratory in Cincinnati. The article included a photo of her sniffing an armpit and said that she trained for nearly a year before becoming a professional sniffer.
___Well, can I honestly pray to know God's calling if I thought it might turn out to be an armpit sniffer? If I included a disclaimer in my prayer ("Lord, show me Your calling, as long as it isn't armpit sniffing or snake handling"), wouldn't that miss the point of praying?
___ I don't know. Like I said, I've been searching for so long to find an answer. That constant tension from trying to know God, trying to hear his voice and know his direction, has added energy to my life and kept me alert. I believe God rewards a searching heart with the revelation of himself, and that is what I am really searching for.
___Berry Simpson, a Sunday School teacher at First Baptist Church in Midland, is a petroleum engineer, writer, runner and member of the city council in Midland.
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