The pull of horizons

For some years I made a little money for the monastery by taking photos for greeting cards. I was told that there were certain ways to focus in, so that the eye was drawn into the centre of a flower or toward a horizon. The view of the Weybourne cliffs that was in the last post for instance, has a path with a tiny figure walking almost, into the future. It also has the horizon of the north sea. Though it isn't a particularly great photo I find it touches that part of me that seeks? longs? searches?

In Elizabeth Johnson's wonderful book ' Quest for the Living God' * that I have mentioned before, she has a chapter on the theology of the great 20th century thinker, Karl Rahner. In his early years Rahner thought that one of the great gifts of human beings was our curiosity. We are always asking questions, seeking answers and in many cases we find we never get to the end. Johnson sums up Rahner's thinking at this point 'While analyzing, weighing, judging and defining concrete objects in the world, our reasoning power keeps on slipping beyond standard definitions to seek new horizons. The number of questions we can ask is limitless'. Human experience is always oriented to the 'more'.

Which brings us to God. In this context Rahner refers to God as the 'whither' of our seeking. It is a rather old word in English but I hope we find it meaningful. Johnson goes on, " We will never reach the end of exploring, having figured it all out. It is something like parallel train tracks that appear to meet at a point in the distance, but when you get to that point the tracks have opened up to another distant point. It is something like the horizon one sees when flying in a airplane; no matter how fast the jet goes it never catches the horizon which remains still farther beyond the window. It is something like being in love and finding your beloved endlessly interesting and beautiful. There is always more'.

This made me think too of a lifetime. When we are young we set goals. We are going to be here by 30 and have done this by 40 and so on. Yet somehow it seems to me we never quite get there. There is always that 'something more'. Certainly, in our search for, our life with, God we never do come to the end. There is always the beauty and joy of the horizon never reached definitively, never grasped. I find that wonderful. How boring God would be, life would be if we ever actually stopped longing and seeking and asking questions.

*Elizabeth A. Johnson: Quest for the Living God',Continuum, New York, 2007