Good Desire

My parish priest said something interesting on Good Friday. He said that if you come to worship requiring of yourself a perfect offering, you aren’t leaving room for grace to work in you. And if you require other people to make a perfect offering, you aren’t allowing grace to work through them. I realized something important then, which is a good realization since I spend so much time whining about liturgy and whatnot. As much as I think liturgy is important, and that it has rules, what’s most important is that it enables people to pray. So maybe I should stop being so judgmental about it, eh?

Being sick has forced – or allowed – me to make certain discoveries somewhat along the same lines as this. Because I get so absolutely exhausted, sometimes I actually don’t do daily prayer. *shock and horror!* I know, I know, for someone who liked praying five times a day that’s a totally messed-up state of affairs. But I’ve come to realize that prayer can’t be something I do just because I’ve told myself I have to. It has to be something I do because I desire to do it. Right now, I simply don’t have the drive to pray that much, and I think I’m deciding that that’s okay. Do you think writing this blog or the one for the church counts as some kooky form of meditation?

Along the lines of desire, I’ve been reading chapter three of Eldredge’s book “Desire.” He talks about how our understanding and practice of religion has become about killing desire; he thinks this is bad because it makes it impossible to follow God, since we can’t know our hearts. He says that “[we] are told to kill desire and call it sanctification.” For Eldredge, this is obviously a bad idea.

I admit that I have trouble with this idea because, in its simplistic formulation, it seems to exclude practices like asceticism. I think asceticism can be a good thing, and the people we’re studying in my course on mysticism tend to agree. Self-denial in various forms has permeated Christian tradition from the very beginning. At various times, I’ve practiced different forms of ascetic discipline myself, and I’ve found it very helpful.

Obviously, I’m no expert on this: I don’t come out of a religious formation, and asceticism, while a current in my life, has by no means dominated the practice of my faith. But I think that ‘killing desire’ can be crucial to discovering the true desire of the heart. Simplifying your life by taking things out of it both literally and figuratively opens up a space for God. Denying oneself certain things you want can help expose the fact that you don’t really need much of the stuff you want. Pain and exhaustion can show you how far you can really push yourself for something you believe in.

For me, all desire or want born of denial is a reflection of the deeper, truer desire of the soul for God. The feeling of wanting something because you don’t have it is a window to a fuller longing that comes to eclipse all else. When you feel hungry, it is a metaphor for your hunger for God. When you’re thirsty, it reflects in miniature a thirst for God. Being tired is a longing for the rest of God. Being in pain is a desire for God’s soothing embrace. Hours of prayer are a foretaste of loving God in totality, to the exclusion of all else. Chastity is an overwhelming need to be consumed by God in His Divine fire.

While I agree that a focus on these acts of ‘killing desire’ is dangerous because it can lead to a dead faith based on works, I think it’s invaluable insofar as it does not remove desire but reveals what lies beneath it – God, the source and end of desire itself.

Asceticism can also help derail unhealthy desires that have an unwholesome grip on a person’s life (which is why obsessing over something you’ve told yourself you can’t have defeats the purpose). It wasn’t an accident that Jesus said ‘he who looks at another man’s wife in lust has already committed adultery in his heart.’ Lust implies an all-consuming want, something that isn’t a true desire because it perverts the heart away from God. Adultery is the Biblical symbol of idolatry – putting something else in the place of God, worshipping it, giving it your heart. Asceticism can help curb these idolatrous tendencies, insofar as it reveals the heart’s longing for God and opens up a space for Him, and does not itself become a god in the place of God.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that “desire” isn’t as simple as wanting, that sometimes wanting does need to be killed, and that maybe the real desire we’re searching for deep within ourselves can set us free from judgment and form and open us up to the working of grace.

Because being focused on what’s right, being over-focused on that to the point you can’t see anything else, makes you like the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son: refusing to enter into the joyous embrace of the father, refusing to allow grace to uncover that desire, for the simple reason that you were right.


And now (for something completely different), a prayer by my younger self:

My Lord, I saw two doves today,
they were like You and I:
perched upon this lonely world,
longing for the sky.

I look to You, my Life, my All,
my perfect Dove is One;
and I, your soft companion there
with You in the golden sun.

One day, my Dove, I’ll fly with You,
in heaven’s full, perfect light;
that day we’ll dance, but now we rest
at dusk, and wait for night.

Tonight, we’ll steal away, my Love,
in cover of the dark;
we’ll hide on secret, verdant shores
among the rush and lark.

Soft, silent kisses we’ll exchange,
draw near as lovebirds do;
we’ll cast but one shadow on the waves,
as I enfold myself in You.

My perfect Dove, we’ll hide away
‘till dawn within the gloom,
and never You’ll depart, nor I,
though light be dawning soon.

The dark of night, my loving Lord,
while terrifying, too,
allows my fragile wings to bear
my softness close to You.