You have touched on a very basic need of all of us – the need for relevance and love. As humans we chase after it and often find only its fleeting substitute. It reminds me of the song “Looking for love in all the wrong places…” Sometimes, even in the most loney place, we hear no response. As you said, love is there. Rilke seems to understand as we writes…
“I’m the one who’s been asking you—it hurts to ask–Who are you? I am orphaned each time the sun goes down. I can feel cast out from everything and even churches look like prisons. That’s when I want you–the knower of my emptiness, you unspeaking partner to my sorrow–that’s when I need you, God, like food. Maybe you don’t know what the nights are like for people who can’t sleep…The night is a huge house where doors torn open by terrified hands lead into endless corridors, and there’s no way out.
God, every night is like that. Always there are some awake, who turn, turn, and do not find you…
God speaks to each of us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night…”
Love is out there, but most importantly, love is in here – deep within our being We were created that way. We are love.

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I appreciate your candor, Erie and willingness to authentically share from your heart.
A couple of years ago I went to a silent retreat led by James Finley. He gave a meaningful talk on the parable of the woman at the well which, resonates with the wisdom offered in today’s meditation. The following are my notes (paraphrased)from Finley’s reflections about what the woman did.
“First she disappears- slips away, no one can see, but Jesus, the solitude of the great way. To become one with the treasure, with the hidden, you must become hidden. Look at what love has done to me.
Second, she leaves her jug at the well-how do we know to abandon hope that we can live a life that can be contained? We give up the experience of being possessive of our thoughts. We no longer have thoughts, we ground ourselves, feelings do not belong to us, with an openness of heart we give up, we let them arise; gently release our grip in a spirit that sets us free.
Third, she goes off with a contagious energy of being more awake than ever and with a childlike presence her heart is broken open to a Love that creates community. Wherever there is wakefulness and Love, an awakened heart, there is oneness with each other and God. There is a tireless nature of Love, it goes on and on and is all-inclusive. Whatever it means to be human and God is one, resting in God is a breakthrough realization.
The ego wants to be the recipient of all the graces. The self dies along the way. Realms of having, fears of not having, we can get caught in self-deceptions of how we treat ourselves, others and the earth. When we choose not to Love, suffering arises. In honoring the gift of being human and acknowledging our brokenness, we can awaken to the woundedness that is perpetuated upon ourselves and others. Love is never imposed, only offered. Love gives all. We are endlessly loved, no matter what we say or do, neither here nor there, no matter how things turn out, we are loved in our brokenness.”
In response to your questions, I recognize that in my attempt to reach God in lofty ways I may pass by the hidden in the ordinary of my day. When I see others as different from me, it becomes easy to objectify rather than to see a real person in front of me. What I thirst for is “neither here nor there” but is found in all.

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The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
– Galway Kinnell from the poem Saint Francis and the Sow

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