Wondering and Wandering by Ruth Miller

Wondering and Wandering – A Journey

One of my favorite quotes is “Not all who wander are lost.” It pretty much sums up my philosophy about life. I grew up in a religious tradition where all the answers seemed to be set in stone – no doubts allowed for life’s big questions. As long as I can remember, I strove to fit into those perimeters of “belief” but I always questioned everything and it caused me a tremendous amount of uncertainty and thoughts of “not being good enough.” Consequently, I became a seeker of spiritual truths since I was a teenager. This journey led me on some unusual paths, zigzagging through traditional and untraditional belief systems. Finally, at this point in my life, after gleaning what sounds true and right for me, I feel that all belief systems and great religions have at their center the essential truth, which is Love. Everything else is secondary – those things that divide us – people, religions, countries. If we all realized that we’re interconnected, that what happens to one of us or some of us or the people of another country, ultimately will affect all of us – this would be a different world.

My passion for travel seems to run parallel, somehow, with my spiritual journey; experiencing different cultures, meeting interesting people, hearing foreign languages, trying to understand and connect with strangers, who often become friends – this has helped me to see the big picture. By experiencing random acts of kindness and connectedness from strangers, by learning to communicate with people whose language I don’t know, by seeing how their lives, passions, and what they care about, are similar to mine – I’m reminded that every person carries a spark of something that is connected to me as well; call it God or Yahweh or Allah or a Higher Power – in essence they are different names for the same longing we all have in our hearts.

Ruth Miller, 2010