Spiritual Longing
What we notice is we are entirely too uncommitted to the spiritual path. Looking closely, we can discern a sense of discontent that belies a subtle desire. Jim Finley
Gregg’s Reflection
My spiritual longing emerged in my teenage years. I graduated high school in 1969, and had a choice, college or Viet Nam. As a rebellious second son, I embraced the counter-culture, and the experience helped me see the cracks in our culture and its institutions. My longing emerged with a simple question: “Is this all there is?”
I look back and see that question came from a place of spiritual discontent. I had grown up in Atlanta, in the middle of the Bible Belt. As I saw the church embracing segregation, and upholding our governments rush to war in Viet Nam, I knew I could not embrace that religion.
My longing deepened when I read Carlos Castenada’s book, The Teachings of Don Juan, a Yaqui Way of Knowledge. I was in my tour of world religions, and read The Teachings as Genie and I spent 10 weeks camping and hiking in the Mountain West soon after we married. The wide open vistas sparked awe and wonder that made me feel so small, showed me there are mysterious forces at work far beyond our human perception. The mountains and canyons revealed God to me.
In reading The Teachings, the thought that captivated me, and sparked my lifelong spiritual journey was a simple one. Don Juan said,
The path of the warrior is one of introspection and self-growth, but it is also one of learning what to value. The only path worth following is the path with a heart. It is the one that allows you to live fully. The others will lead to suffering and emptiness.
The path with a heart. For the last fifty years, I have sought to follow that path to the end. I call it God’s Faint Path. It is so easy to step off the path, to miss a turn, or make a wrong turn. After all, we are listening for the still small voice. But, when I stumble back across the path, the energy is incredible. St Irenaeus said,
The glory of God is the human person fully alive.
To follow the Path with a Heart to the end is to become who God made you to be, to be a human person fully alive. That is the essence of spiritual longing to me. Blessings.
Journaling Prompts
What are the faint spiritual longings in your life? As you contemplate the path with a heart, where might that lead? As I left the business world, I had a longing to live more consistently with my values. That longing led to concrete action in favor of that choice. What concrete actions are you taking to find and follow the path with a heart?
Scripture
As the deer longs for streams of water, so my soul longs for you, my God.
Psalm 42:1
Taste and see that the Lord is good.
Psalm 34:8
My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.
Psalm 84:2
Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.
Proverbs 13:12
Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him.
Isaiah 30:18
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.
Romans 8:18
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone, the new is here.
2 Corinthians 5:17
Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to clean us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.
Hebrews 10:22
Ancient Writings
You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.
St Augustine
May I love Him whom to love is to live indeed.
William of St. Thierry
Blessed is he who loves God, and he who longs to see Him will be satisfied.
Saint Francis of AssisI
We must beg the Holy Spirit, with ardent longing, to give us these fruits. The Holy Spirit alone knows how to bring to light the sweetness hidden away under the rugged exterior of the words of the Law. We must go to the Holy Spirit for interior guidance.
St. Bonaventure, Holiness of Life
In the dark night of the soul, bright flows the river of God.
Saint John of the Cross
I have found it easy to obtain the presence of God. He desires to be more present to us than we desire to seek Him. He desires to give Himself to us far more readily than we desire to receive Him. We only need to know how to seek God, and this is easier and more natural than breathing.
Madame Guyon, Experiencing God Through Prayer
This is faith: a renouncing of everything we are apt to call our own and relying wholly upon the blood, righteousness and intercession of Jesus.
John Newton
Modern Writings
If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
C.S. Lewis
We live in the Now and Not Yet.
Scott Armstrong
It is for the honor of Jesus that we endure the trial of our faith with sacred joy. Let each man surrender his own longings to the glory of Jesus, and feel, If my lying in the dust would elevate my Lord by so much as an inch, let me still lie among the pots of earth. If to live on earth forever would make my Lord more glorious, it should be my heaven to be shut out of heaven. Our time is fixed and settled by eternal decree. Let us not be anxious about it, but wait with patience till the gates of pearl shall open.
Charles Spurgeon, Christian Classics: Six books by Charles Spurgeon in a single collection, with active table of contents
For human beings, the most daunting challenge is to become fully human. For to become fully human is to become fully divine.
Thomas Keating, Manifesting God
One of the reasons that hiddenness is such an important aspect of the spiritual life is that it keeps us focused on God. In hiddenness we do not receive human acclamation, admiration, support, or encouragement. In hiddenness we have to go to God with our sorrows and joys and trust that God will give us what we most need.
In our society we are inclined to avoid hiddenness. We want to be seen and acknowledged. We want to be useful to others and influence the course of events. But as we become visible and popular, we quickly grow dependent on people and their responses and easily lose touch with God, the true source of our being. Hiddenness is the place of purification. In hiddenness we find our true selves.
Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following Your Will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
Our God is a God who cares, heals, guides, directs, challenges, confronts, corrects. To discern means first of all to listen to God, to pay attention to God’s active presence, and to obey God’s prompting, direction, leadings, and guidance.
Henri Nouwen, Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life
It seems that in the spiritual world, we do not really find something until we first lose it, ignore it, miss it, long for it, choose it, and personally find it again--but now on a new level. More than anything else, the Spirit keeps us connected and safely inside an already existing flow, if we but allow it.
Richard Rohr, Falling Upward
Mystical experience radicalized your commitment to live life with all your heart. The divinity of everything. In my therapy, I knew God’s presence was calling me to close the loop and help the other connect with God.
James Finley, Living School Teaching
The longings that form the visceral energy of prayer are not necessarily felt and expressed in concrete and tangible ways that are easy to recognize. Sometimes—often, in fact—the longings of prayer are diffused and muted longings that one barely feels at all.
What we notice is that we tend to be entirely too indifferent and uncommitted to the spiritual path. But in looking more closely, we can discern a sense of discontent with our apparent lack of zeal. The discontent belies a subtle desire hidden beneath the surface of an ongoing apparent lack of desire. . .
We pretend we do not care about what we, at some deep level know that is hard to access, actually care about very much. There is, it seems, a deal that the heart makes with itself not to admit that it harbors a desire so deep it could not go on without that desire being fulfilled.
James Finley
Sometimes when we are quite young, we are given a taste of the infinite, and we yearn for it for the rest of our lives. I know what I know and I know that I know it.
Many are called to this, but have no one to bear witness to what is happening to them. All of us are given this taste. Something happened to me in my heart, and I will not break faith with this in my heart. The curtain opened and the infinite nature of each moment is revealed.
For some people, this touch, this communion, when it leaves, it was careful to leave in your heart a longing for it. I fleetingly rested in God, and having tasted it, my life will forever be incomplete without it. It is like a flame flickering in the wind. This longing. When you are in this state, and you read the mystics, you know you have not been deceived. It is an empathic resonance with something unexplainable. Bearing witness to what is possible. Most are unrecognized, and in fidelity to it, it knows it is moving and touches others. Teresa of Avila was cloistered. Julian spent her life in a cell. Other mystics live this way in the world.
When you start to talk about the longing, the mystics would hear it. A spiritual director listens for this longing and acknowledges it. Everything the mystics say bears witness so others can meet God in this presence. The deathless presence of the mystics live on through their words. Centuries later, we read and are touched. Merton was a lineage holder, passing along this wisdom. God is infinitely in love with you whether you surrender to it or not.
James Finley, Living School Teaching