Like many people, I’ve spent years looking for God. I’ve run to mountains, read St. Augustine, meditated, gone to Church, prayed and wept over the idea.  In America, there are always plenty of people who know the answers to things (just think of the dog and animal worlds, not to mention politics or religion)  and will tell you absolutely what to think and do and what is true or false. I get lost in America sometimes, overwhelmed by the angry din of people who know the answers to everything. I love people who understand that we know absolutely nothing. I am one of them. The more I live, the more things I realize I do not know.

But to get on TV in America, or to have a voice, you have to know absolutely everything. I will never be on TV.

To me, who is absolutely certain about nothing, the culture around me seems to be getting more rigid and absolute. And for me, a spiritual life begins by choosing not to listen to others, but to look inside of yourself, where most answers lie.

Take the idea of where God is and what he is. I accept that I will never know the answer to that for sure, anymore that I will have a perfect life without trouble, or that my technology will work right out of the box and every time beyond.  Or that I will behave perfectly all of the day, never yell at the dogs or lose my temper. When you call Customer Service these days, it is a spiritual experience testing your love and patience.

I just got an Ipad 2 with video. The Internet connection doesn’t work – yet. My video camera fell and the batter was lost. These are not crises. This is the yin and yang. We always think it used to be better, simpler. It was not, I bet.

I feel God at the Rouse farm. In the dead leaves I photograph. Walking my dogs. Seeing Maria and the donkeys. Posting a photo. Taking a photo. Writing a book. Making a little movie. Making a friend. Seeing Maria make a quilt or a potholder.  Sitting by the wood stove. Hiking in the woods. Reading a book. Listening to Kanye West. Reading Wendell Berry. Or Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Herding sheep with Rose. Holding Maria’s hand. Loving her. Growing, learning and change. Every new idea is a vision of God for me, every opportunity to tell my story, live my life, experience love and loss and darkness and light.

I pray that I never find God, because the search – a journey of a million little miracles – would be over.

One of the many things I have come to believe in recent years is that people who have all the answers have none.