Dear Readers:
If you are still reading my weekly newsletter, I say “Thank you.” Many of you will undoubtedly have noticed my change in focus from matters of technology to those of spirituality. If you prefer the old format I understand, but I feel this is a direction I am meant to travel and I hope you will join me on this journey. (If you wish to “unsubscribe,” I will not be offended.)
The short answer to why I have shifted my focus is that I am trying to listen more closely to my soul, and my soul is telling me to focus on a different future–our long-term and eternal future.
As a way of explaining how I arrived at my decision, I’ll start with this quote from James Hollis: “Answers tell us where we’ve been. Questions get us on our journey.”
My entire life I have been asking questions of myself. One of the most important questions I ever asked was this: Why am I here?
The first time I recall asking this question was in January of 1988. I was a young naval officer and was attending the Navy-Marine Corps Intelligence School in Virginia Beach, Virginia. I was living with two other officers in a beach house in Sandbridge, VA. One Friday evening, after a long week of courses, we walked down to a bar at the end of the beach to have a few beers. I ended up having a few too many “cold ones” and decided to walk home alone along the beach.
For reasons unknown, I was in a contemplative mood and, at some point, I turned to the ocean and screamed into the stormy water: “Why am I here?”
I received no answer, but I never really forgot the question.
Nearly 31 years later I was in a suburb of Fort Worth, Texas for a speaking engagement. It was a hot, dusty August Sunday evening and I was walking down the street of some upscale shopping area when I was arrested by the sound of a chorus of hundreds of birds chirping in a tree. I paused to admire the sound and suddenly, as if out of nowhere, I heard a voice say, “You have the question backwards.” (The voice was not an external sound. It was more of an internal voice that emanated from within me.)
Instantly, I knew the question that was being referred to was the question I had yelled into the raging sea decades earlier. The question I was seeking an answer to was not: Why am I here? It was–and is–Here I am, Why?
Here I am, Why?
Now that is a question worthy of reflection and it is one I intend to spend the remainder of my time in this earthly realm reflecting upon.
Earlier this year, I read “Humboldt’s Gift,” a book by the Nobel Prize-winning author Saul Bellow. Towards the end of the book, I was struck by this statement by the book’s main character Charlie Citrine who said: “We do not think amply about who we are.”
I mention this because before I/we can explore either of the previous questions–Why am I here? or Here I am, Why?–we must first explore who we are and what we mean when we say “I am.” The statement “I am” is more profound than many of us imagine.
Until next week, I invite you to reflect on the following passage from Exodus 3:14. In the beginning of the verse God reveals his name to be “I AM WHO I AM,” but when Moses asks how he should respond to the Israelites when they ask him who sent him, God responds by saying “tell them: “I AM has sent me to you.”
“I AM has sent me to you” is a strange and paradoxical statement but I encourage you to work with it for it contains some hidden wisdom which may help us better understand our role in creating our eternal future.
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