Benjamin seeking balloon

Benjamin has just come down the stairs. He's two and learning the language. I sit as he approaches and he points to something in the kitchen that I can not see. He communicates through sound but I don't get it. It has a singsong quality. As I've said to friends "He's talking about something important and we have not caught up yet." So I asked him a thing or two and I was not able to figure it out. He simply looked at me with his particular deadpan face he has. He looked at me as if to say, "Silly father it is so easy. It's right there in the kitchen."He proceeded to enter the kitchen and come back with a balloon. I had to be shown. I didn't have the language and I had to be shown.

I wonder if there isn't parallels here with the religious journey. I have been reading our tradition's big claims for four days now. It's just now that they are starting to sink in. Not that they did not effect me before but there is a deepening happening which I can not really explain. I can't describe it but I will encourage persons to begin.

Maybe that it is why we need to seek God. Like Benjamin, we know the object of our desire but we do not have words to describe it. As creatures maybe we are already aware of our hearts intent but blind to the way. Augustine wrote our restlessness until finding our rest in God. Anselm wrote of faith seeking understanding. So maybe it is our practice of seeking that clears the way. We continue to practice and seek not because we have it but to understand that pull that already has us. We practice to develop a language for that task we have already begun. As I move deeper into these statements I might come to see, regardless of where I began, the balloon of Benjamins desire.

I think Benjamin rightly shows this morning that not having the language is no excuse to not seek nor show others those things we have found.