To wonder and to wander...

Wonder and wander: these are two words that students commonly mix up. Two words with similar spellings yet two totally different meanings. Yet, as of late, I have found that these words are strangely interconnected for often, one phenomenon leads to the other.

People wonder, asking questions, seeking answers, looking for reasons that don't exist. These wonderings often lead to real and metaphorical wandering. Some wander through caverns of darkness, depression, and despair; others travel the dusty roads of questions and confusion, while still others saunter through the meadows of blind hope and light. All of the wanderings, though differently painful and unclear, can lead to similar places of restoration and deep breathing.

I do not question those who wander; I question those who don't.

How can you know faith if you have never known doubt? How can you know love if you have never known brokenhearted loneliness? The philosopher Derrida argues that the absence of something makes its presence all the more evident. In this light, does not the absence of God in some places make the presence of God all the more clear in others? It does for me; what about for you?

Perhaps I am foolish, lost in my own ignorance. But I can so clearly remember the moments of my life when I felt so empty, despised, dirty and alone that I could not do enough to convince myself of the truth of God's existence. But these moments contrast so beautifully with the times when I felt so full of his nearness that I baffled at my own moments of doubt. My life is full of both faith and doubt.

That is what makes me human; the choice to keep wandering is perhaps, what makes me divine. Not divine in the deistic sense; in no way do I claim to be a god. But there is something of God's nature that, in some small, strange and unique way, must abide in me. That piece is called tenacity. Why else -- how else -- would I keep going? How else could you?

So to all others who wander through life, plagued by the wonderings and doubt so permanently attached to our human condition, take heart. You are not alone. I wander too.