Reflection Five in a Seven-Part Series on Encountering Transcendence in the Present Moment
Yesterday I visited Ketchikan, Alaska—a town with a storied and colourful past. As throngs of tourists poured onto the dock, swelling the population threefold in mere moments, I paused to wonder: What were the men and women who built this town aching for?
This is a place stitched together with paradox—famous for its silver-scaled salmon and its red-light district in equal measure. Its boardwalks creak with the memories of rain-soaked bootsteps and hasty retreats. You can almost hear the clinking of glasses from a century ago and the murmurs of deals struck in smoke-filled parlours. Ketchikan seems to hum with a certain human hunger—the kind that drives a person to board a ship into the unknown, to hammer timber into the bones of a town on the edge of wilderness.
Perhaps it was the lust for gold that first lured them, that shimmering mirage promising wealth beyond imagining. Or perhaps it was something subtler—the recognition that here, in this raw and rugged landscape, was a different kind of abundance. Not coins, but salmon. Not palaces, but tall trees. Not fame, but freedom.
Still, I keep circling back to this: the quest for more. It is ancient. Endlessly dressed in new clothes. One century it’s gold. The next, digital currency or likes on a screen. But beneath each version lies the same pulse—that ache for something just out of reach.
We are, it seems, creatures of longing.
And perhaps that’s not such a bad thing.
You see, I’ve come to believe that longing isn’t a flaw in our design, but a feature. A sacred homing device buried deep in the soul. It tells us, often in whispers, that we are made for more than what we can hold or hoard. Not more as in accumulation, but more as in depth. More wonder. More meaning. More presence.
There is a kind of holiness in that ache, if we let it do its work. It’s not always comfortable, mind you. Longing stretches us. It keeps us from settling into the illusion that anything here is permanent. It stirs us awake when we start to doze through our days. And it teaches us, again and again, that we are pilgrims—not settlers—in this world.
Yesterday, as I wandered past the colourful buildings of Creek Street—where houses lean playfully on stilts above water that has heard more secrets than I dare guess—I was struck by how much of this town was built on longing. Every fishing boat, every weathered face, every tale told over fire or whisky—all seem to carry echoes of a search. For prosperity. For love. For survival. For God.
And perhaps that’s what makes this place feel so deeply human.
Longing can lead us astray, of course. We know this. We chase illusions. We mistake the signpost for the destination. But if we let it, longing can also purify us. Refine our vision. Teach us to hunger not for what glitters, but for what grounds.
It may even be that God meets us most clearly in our longing—not by removing it, but by inhabiting it. By gently guiding it home.
Tomorrow, we’ll turn to one of the more undignified but necessary companions on this journey: “The Humbling Gift of Being Wrong.” Brace yourselves. This one may sting a little.
But until then, I invite you to lean into the ache. Trace it back. Listen to its cry. It just may be the voice of the sacred, calling you not to more, but to enough.
