“My soul thirsts for God, the living God. When can I enter and see the face of God?” We’ve all heard these lines, prayed them, and in our more reflective moments tried to mean them; but, mostly, our hearts have belied those words. We haven’t really, at least not in our more conscious thoughts and feelings, longed for God with any real intensity and in our beds at night our souls are generally keeping vigil for someone other than God. But, for this, we need not apologize. We are human beings, not angels, and nature and instinct conspire to direct our gaze and our desire towards this earth. It is persons and things of this earth for which our hearts long with intensity. Moreover, our longings are wide and promiscuous. We ache for a lot of things, though are most intense longings mostly have to do with yearning for a soulmate and with emotional and sexual consummation. The point here is that, consciously and unconsciously, we understand these powerful earthy and erotic attractions as taking us away from God and as something we need to give up in order to move closer to God. Our desire for God and our more earthy and sexual desires are perceived as competitors, incompatible, demanding that we renounce one for the other. That misconception, more than we imagine, hurts us. Why? Because everything that is beautiful and attractive, however earthy and sexual, is contained inside of God. God is the creator of all that is beautiful, attractive, colorful, sexual, witty, brilliant, and intelligent. All that we are attracted to on this earth, including the beauty that allures us sexually, is found inside of God and our attraction and longing for it here on earth is, in the end, a longing for God. Our souls need to keep vigil at a deeper level. This is what many of the saints and mystics intuited when they felt such intensity in their longing for union with God. All that is beautiful and attractive is found inside of God and is found there in a form that exceeds our experience of it here. Hence their longing for God could indeed be compared to a thirsty deer longing for a drink from a cool stream. Ultimately, a yearning for God is because everything we desire, be it ever so human, fleshly, or sexual, is inside of God, the author of all that is good. Our souls too thirst for God and they keep vigil for God at night, even though mostly we are unaware of it. But we never really understand this. Why aren’t we more interested in the One of which these things are only a pale reflection? [1]
[1] Excerpt from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s reflection, “Longing, Desire, and the Face of God” December 2010.