Desire can be a good thing!

You'd think we were Buddhists! In meditating, Buddhists often "vow to extinguish desire," believing that attachment to wants, cravings, and our will creates suffering. So many Christians I encounter in classes and retreats think it is wrong to have desires. In a misguided attempt to "deny themselves and follow [Christ]," they attempt to live a life with no desires and as a result lead passionless lives.

Contrast that with Scriptures which declare that God longs to "give you the desire of your heart and make all your plans succeed." (Psalm 20:4) Now I'm not suggesting, with some Christians, that if you just follow God, you will soon be healthy, wealthy, and wise. After all, the Lord we follow was homeless and died a horrible death. But there are many references in Scripture that lead me to conclude with Augustine and Ignatius that our deepest authentic desires are God-given and reflect who we were created to be.

To this end, Ignatius has retreatants explore and ask for what they desire while making the Spiritual Exercises. In her book, Spiritual Direction: Beyond the Beginnings, author Janet Ruffing maintains that by praying for what we think we desire, we come to find out what we truly desire. In the beginning, some of the things we may ask of God don't reflect who we truly are in God. But as we examine and receive the things we think we desire, and find that some of those things have meaning for us and others don't, we find out more about who we are. Praying for what we think we desire helps us to sort things out until we find out what we truly desire. And as we find out our deepest authentic desires, we learn more about who we are, who we were created to be, and about the God who made us that way.

So let us live lives full of passion for Christ, desiring him whose desire for us led him through the cross and the tomb to an eternity where all may feast with him at the kingdom banquet. Let us, despite our sin, our dimness of sight, and our human frailty, petition Heaven with our desires until we come to know our deepest desires and our deepest selves and hence desire the one who made us thus.

Amen.

Grounded spirituality can be very earthy

Yesterday was not turning out to be a great day. Although I always enjoy the conversations and musings of the Spirituality and Prayer Group which I lead each Thursday morning, I was immediately brought down by news of my father's continuing health problems. Despite all of the new insights gained in our discussion of Eugene Peterson's Christ Plays in 10,000 Faces, I was really bummed out by the phone call I received right at the end of our discussion.

So, after praying for the group and sending them out in God's name in the power of the Holy Spirit to see what ministry God would have them participate in, I tried to discern what it was that God would have me do in that time and place.

My prayers turned to lament. Like David of old, I opened the pain in my heart to God, figuring that God is big enough to handle my anger and woundedness and disappointment. And the prayers helped as I sensed that God did indeed hear just how troubled I was. But my mood did not brighten. There was no lifting of burdens. Just a heavy silence in the presence of a God who understands and cares for me.

But then I walked into one of the bathrooms in the church and noticed that the toilet was clogged. Fortunately there was nothing smelly or yucky about the sight that greeted me. Just a toilet that refused to flush and was therefore not useful to me or the kids attending a daycamp at the church this week.

It occurred to me that I couldn't do anything about my father's health or any other of a number of problems I had taken to God in prayer. But I could fix this toilet. That was a difference I could make.

So I walked down the hall and found a plumber's helper in the janitor's storage closet and I did the one thing I was empowered to do at that particular time and place. And as the water swirled down in a satisfying gush, I laughed at the discovery that my burdens had seemingly been flushed away as well.

In that moment, I rediscovered something I knew but which needed to be reinforced for me in a very concrete way--that spirituality is a mixture of prayer and reflection coupled with down to earth actions that God puts before us.

If we seek to know God's will for our lives and do the simple things that God puts before us--no matter how simple, unlikely, or even detestable--God will then show us the next step to take toward an eternity of love.

Thanks be to God! Amen.

Unreflective Lives

Can any of us blessed with the gift of sight imagine going through our entire lives without looking in a mirror? Most of us make sure to catch sight of ourselves before we would ever even conceive of venturing out where others can see us. We want to make sure we’ve addressed the horrors of a “bad hair day” or that we don’t go off to a meeting or interview with something green stuck between our teeth. Chances are we check ourselves out in the mirror several times a day, at least every time we venture into the rest room. Some of us have a mirror hanging in our offices or keep a compact mirror in our desk or purse. And yet many people go through life without ever stopping to reflect on who they are, why they are here, what their relationship is to God or the universe. They live unreflective lives.

In his book Thoughts in Solitude, Thomas Merton wrote that “there is no greater tragedy in the spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality, for life is maintained and nourished in us by our vital relationship with realities outside and above us.” (p. 17) In other words, we need to reflect on our lives, our relationships with God and others, and how we spend our time, in order to be sure that we don’t live lives devoid of meaning spent focusing our attention on things that are of no real consequence.

Spirituality, then, is that process by which we converse with God and seek to discern God’s presence and God’s intentions for us so that we don’t spend a lifetime in empty pursuits that are not grounded in God’s purpose for creating us in the first place. To fail to look in the mirror and, worse yet, to fail to regard the life of Christ and to see what it means to live a life that is both fully human and fully divine, is to doom ourselves to spend a lifetime marooned, adrift on a sea of emptiness, and to never truly be grounded in the One who is the ground of all being.

Let us live lives of reflection, not spent endlessly admiring our own image like Narcissus, but rather seeking through Christ to begin to discern the image of God in which we were created.

Come away to a quiet place: Being responsible by going on retreat

Mark 6 details how Jesus took his disciples on a retreat.

6:30 The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught.
6:31 He said to them, "Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while."
For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.
6:32 And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves.

Apparantly, Jesus saw that the disciples were as busy as Martha in her kitchen in Luke 10 and offered them a needed respite so that they could rest, recharge, and reflect on their work so that they wouldn't just be going through the motions. Perhaps Jesus saw that, like Martha, the disciples were "distracted by [their] many tasks." He invites them to sit at his feet and rest and listen, as Mary did in Luke 10.

Taking time to be in God's loving presence and to evaluate our relationship with God and other people and to reflect on the talents and gifts we have been given and how best to put them to use for the sake of the kingdom is time well spent. Yes, some things might have to wait a bit and some things which seem rather important to us may have to be dispensed with all together. But by being rested and by having our work be informed by spirit, the things we do will be meaningful and will be carried out with purpose. As professional basketball palyers can attest, by taking time to aim for the goal rather than just trying to slop the ball into the basket, they have a much greater chance of hitting the mark. In the same way, by taking time to rest and reflect on God and God's purpose for our lives, we insure that our kingdom work has a greater likelihood of pleasing God and hitting the mark.

Jesus himself frequently went away to pray and to seek God's counsel in order to be sure that his ministry was in line with God's aims for his time on earth. If the Son of God needs time apart, who are we to soldier on and deny ourselves the opportunity to rest and to be grounded and centered in God?

Although taking time off from our daily tasks may seem to us a bit irresponsible, Jesus invites us to rest and reflect so that we can be rested and informed participants in God's ministry, rather than Christian hamsters running on the wheel.