Book 2 - Befriending our Desires - Philip Sheldrake DLT 2001
The nature of love
"Love is not simply a matter of immediate feelings. There may be times, even in the most intense love commitments, when tangible feelings are absent. But love ultimately proves itself in its focused attention and its quality of dedication that is richer and deeper than mere duty or willpower. It is perhaps what St Augustine means by "intention" the author of English medieval mysteical text "The Cloud of Unknowing" means by "naked intent"." p.16
He does not like to separate "Agape love" from "Eros love"
He writes of the need of desire "To allow ourselves actively to desire is also to be vulnerable. The Spirit of God given to us does not simply lead us into all truth but also into the vulnerability of Jesus' way. But to take such risks is at the same time to know ourselves to be held securely and to be safe at some deep and essential level beyond our own powers to control. The Spirit is also the indwelling power of God in the heart of each of us, sustaining us." p. 21
Desire or passion for God has been looked on with suspicion though historically by the church
"Unfortunately, a more familiar influence in the consciousness of many Christians is the image of a passionless, detached God whose perfection (based partly on the philosophy of Aristotle) is to be self-centred, still and at rest. According to this image, God's will is eternal, predetermined and extrinsic to our own hopes and feelings. If we believe ourselves to be created in the image of that God, we can easily associate desire and passion with lack of balance, with confusion, loss of control and dangerous subjectivity, Desire is also closely linked to sexuality, which seems to have little to do with common (traditional male?) perceptions of the spiritual. Desire, then, is too often viewed with suspicion as something disturbing or misleading, even if pleasurable, rather than something to be embraced as a positive and dynamic force. As a consequence, human love for God has been treated for centuries as entirely unique and thus disconnected from all other forms of human loving."
The nature of love
"Love is not simply a matter of immediate feelings. There may be times, even in the most intense love commitments, when tangible feelings are absent. But love ultimately proves itself in its focused attention and its quality of dedication that is richer and deeper than mere duty or willpower. It is perhaps what St Augustine means by "intention" the author of English medieval mysteical text "The Cloud of Unknowing" means by "naked intent"." p.16
He does not like to separate "Agape love" from "Eros love"
He writes of the need of desire "To allow ourselves actively to desire is also to be vulnerable. The Spirit of God given to us does not simply lead us into all truth but also into the vulnerability of Jesus' way. But to take such risks is at the same time to know ourselves to be held securely and to be safe at some deep and essential level beyond our own powers to control. The Spirit is also the indwelling power of God in the heart of each of us, sustaining us." p. 21
Desire or passion for God has been looked on with suspicion though historically by the church
"Unfortunately, a more familiar influence in the consciousness of many Christians is the image of a passionless, detached God whose perfection (based partly on the philosophy of Aristotle) is to be self-centred, still and at rest. According to this image, God's will is eternal, predetermined and extrinsic to our own hopes and feelings. If we believe ourselves to be created in the image of that God, we can easily associate desire and passion with lack of balance, with confusion, loss of control and dangerous subjectivity, Desire is also closely linked to sexuality, which seems to have little to do with common (traditional male?) perceptions of the spiritual. Desire, then, is too often viewed with suspicion as something disturbing or misleading, even if pleasurable, rather than something to be embraced as a positive and dynamic force. As a consequence, human love for God has been treated for centuries as entirely unique and thus disconnected from all other forms of human loving."
But we need to humanize our love for God and how it can change us
We also need to see how our own experience of human love connects with
our love for God and may even aid our love for God
"The highest form of love, drawing us into a more perfect relationship with God, includes rather than excludes the best in all our human experiences of love." p 25
STARTING WHERE WE ARE AND GIVING GOD OUR WHOLE HEART IS SO IMPORTANT
We need to listen to our desires says Ignatius Loyola
"To return to the teaching of Ignatius Loyola, "to ask God our Lord for what I want and desire" as we focus our prayer is an invitation to us to acknowledge our immediate sense of need. But this is only a starting point for the gradual unfolding of what it is with which we are most passionately and deeply engaged." p. 29
"The more profoundly we reach into ourselves, the more we experience desires that are both uniquely our own and also uniquely God given."
"To return to the teaching of Ignatius Loyola, "to ask God our Lord for what I want and desire" as we focus our prayer is an invitation to us to acknowledge our immediate sense of need. But this is only a starting point for the gradual unfolding of what it is with which we are most passionately and deeply engaged." p. 29
"The more profoundly we reach into ourselves, the more we experience desires that are both uniquely our own and also uniquely God given."
Desire not to be confused with dryness. We can be dry but we can still have a deep desire for God.
DON’T THINK YOUR DRYNESS IS A LACK OF DESIRE FOR THE HOLY SPIRIT
"Some spiritual writers mention a deepening of desire in association with the gradual loss of images of God. The inability to pin God down, as it were, to this or that image drives us ultimately into a certain darkness or unknowing in which desire alone becomes the force that drives us onwards. It is sometimes important to remind ourselves that dryness in prayer is not the same as absence of desire - in fact, the contrary is true. For Julian of Norwich, "longing" and "yearning" are key experiences not only in our forgiveness by God and conversion from sin but also in our developing relationship with God. And for the anonymous author of "The Cloud of Unknowing", "Now you have to stand in desire all your life long" (Chaper 2). In other words, we need to stand open-handed and open-hearted, not assuming that we know best or, indeed, that we know anything very much. We need also to learn how to wait and, like Mary in the Lucan story of the Anunciation, ask continually, "How can this be?"
Waiting is one of the hardest lessons for the serious seeker after God.
By standing in desire we need to be ready to struggle and to allow our
perspectives to change so that we are ever more open to God's actions in
us."p.33
"You must want like a God"
DESIRE IS A SIGN OF THE HOLY SPIRIT AT WORK
The seventeenth century Anglican mystic Thomas Traherne offers quite a
contrast. For him, our human desire is the image of God within us. It is God
operating in us and gifting us with a holy dissatisfaction with anything
transitory or less than all. Traherne seems to use "desire" and
"wants" interchangeably and to understand both as our openness to
infinity. "Wants are the bands and cements between God and us. Had we not
wanted we could never have been obliged. Whereas now we are infinitely obliged
because we want infinitely" (Traherne, Centuries 1.51). God is very much a
God of desire. Indeed, for Traherne, God could not be a God without desire
because "want is the fountain of all His fullness". For "had
there been no need He would not have created the world, no made us, nor
manifested His wisdom nor exercised His power, nor beautified eternity, nor
prepared the Joys of Heaven." p 38
"For Meister Eckhart (see his Latin Sermon VI) the love with which God loves humankind is the same mutual love that unites the Trinity. God's love for us is itself a sharing in the divine life. God's love is also identified in human experience with the Spirit. "He loves us in such a way that it is as if his blessedness depended on it". And, finally, "he gives himself and everything he has." p. 39
"For Meister Eckhart (see his Latin Sermon VI) the love with which God loves humankind is the same mutual love that unites the Trinity. God's love for us is itself a sharing in the divine life. God's love is also identified in human experience with the Spirit. "He loves us in such a way that it is as if his blessedness depended on it". And, finally, "he gives himself and everything he has." p. 39
"For as truly as there is in God a quality of pity and compassion, so truly is there in God a quality of thirst and longing: and the power of this longing in Christ enables us to respond to his longing, and without this no soul comes to heaven. And this quality of longing and thirst comes from God's everlasting goodness" p.39
God moves towards us in the Eucharist
"For another sixteenth-century Spanish mystic, Teresa of Avila, the fact of Christ sharing our human experience in an incarnation of the desire of God to be with us in our weakness and vulnerability. God, in Christ, knows our neediness and knows that we could not begin to move towards God without the faithful presence of Christ. The Eucharist, for Teresa, is where we continue to encounter the divine desire to be unconditionally available to us.
Seeing our need, therefore, the good Jesus has sought the admirable means whereby He has shows us the extreme love which He has for us, and in His own name and in that of His brethren He has made this petition. "Give us Lord, this day our daily bread".
What a great love is that of the Son and what a great love is that of the Father...Yes, for He is not like us; knowing that He was carrying our His words by loving us as He loves himself, He went about seeking how He could carry out this commandment more perfectly, even at His own cost" (The Way of Perfection, chapter 33)
"A danger in ignoring the spiritual significance of eros-love is that this may actually undermine rather than enhance the possibility of a mystical experience of God. Combating the anti-mystical tendencies of his own classical Protestant tradition, the Lutheran theologian Paul Tillich actually defines eros as "the mystical quality of love" in his Systematic Theology. Religion without eros will tend to be reduced to moral values and dutiful rituals. A fixed cosmic order with no dynamism in God, merely an enforced faithfulness to the unchanging laws of divinity, means that stable social and religious roles will tend to outweigh the value of the great variety within our own personal lives. "If the eros quality of love with respect to God is rejected, the consequence of this rejection is that love towards God becomes an impossible concept...replaced by mere obedience to God" (Tillich 1954 p.30) p 48
"Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires know, and from whom no secrets are hid; cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy Holy name, Amen,"
The Dark Night of the Soul - John of the Cross
"Another work of John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel (Book 1 Chapter 2) speaks of the journey towards union with God in terms of a "dark night". As human beings, we are people of desire. At the centre of our being is a deep longing that is painful because unsatisfied. Our loves in and for the world awaken desire and may, indeed, focus our experience of God. But if we remain only on the surface of these experiences they cannot bring fulfillment. The "dark night" cuts off human desires for a time and in the experience of emptiness sharpens desire and an awareness that ultimate fulfillment lies in union with God. The dark night is also experienced as an absence of an immediate sense of God." p.51
Song of Songs uses eros language to legitimise relationship between us and God
Origen uses the word "eros" in his commentaries about our love for God
Julian of Norwich writes about how all our desires are met in God
"Our good Lord revealed that it is very greatly pleasing to him that a simple soul should come naked, openly and familiarly. For this is the loving yearning of the soul through the touch of the Holy Spirit, from the understanding which I have in this revelation: God, of your goodness give me yourself, for you are enough for me, and I can ask for nothing which is less which can pay you full worship. And if I ask anything which is less, always I am in want; but only in you do I have everything" (Showings chapter 5) p.55
Julian of Norwich continues
"So I was taught that love is our Lord's meaning. And I saw very certainly in this and in everything that before God made us he loved us, which love was never abated and never will be. And in this love he had done all his works, and in this love he had made all things profitable to us, and in this love our life is everlasting. In our creation we had beginning, but the love in which he created us was in him from without beginning. In this love we have our beginning, and all this shall we see in God without end" (Julian, Showings chapter 86) p. 56
So we need to attend to our desires in our prayer
However, to ask for "what we desire " may be more challenging than we first might think
"To "ask for what I desire" or "to standing in desire" is likely to be an experience of conversion and change. If desire, our longing, is to be truly liberated, we must to want what can actually answer our longing. We need to discover, slowly perhaps, that we long for is "the All", the infinite, rather than simply everything as the sum total for what we can accumulate, grasp, or control by our own means. When Ignatius Loyola suggests that we ask God for what we desire this may also, on one level, be a request that we come to know what it really is that we desire or need to desire. It may also be a request to be free enough to ask truly for our deepest desire, although we have to admit that at this point we do not want it wholeheartedly!" p.64
He has a whole chapter on sexual love and how it corresponds to divine love
"When sexual union is the consummation of deep, exclusive and faithful love between two people, it may be a sacrament of that union with God, and in God with all that is, for which God has created and redeemed us. Shared sexual joy, as a step towards God rather than as a substitute for it, is a genuine act of worship, a genuine prayer" p 95
"Sexual ecstasy, while involving some form of bodily self-giving, is more than bodily in the sense that it concerns the blending together of two people. In other words, it is profoundly associated with intimacy. Intimacy with another human being (of which bodily self-giving is a powerful but exclusive symbol) is the privileged context for experiencing God as immanence" p 99
Journey to maturity involves letting go
"From childhood onwards, we all have to learn that to grow up involves leaving the familiar and controllable, and travelling through places and experiences that are not familiar. There are where "you are not".
Yet, paradoxically, it is also in this journey through the loss of childhood certainties and securities that we come more and more to a firm sense of our own identity and to our ability to make autonomous choices. In the process of maturing we hopefully move from, whether consciously or not, fulfilling the expectations and desires of others to a greater realization of our own desires and the appropriateness of choosing for ourselves. If we are unwilling to leave the security of which is known we will never arrive anywhere. "To reach satisfaction in all, desire its possession in nothing" If we cannot let go of trying to accumulate many different things, we will never discover what having "all" means" p 102
From many desires to deepest desire
"Because discernment is a journey, we will find ourselves moving, slowly perhaps, from an initial awareness of a multitude of desires, wants and needs (and probably a relatively undiscriminating search for their satisfaction) to the deeper levels of our self. It may also be seen as a movement from awareness of desire to responsible action in the light of that awareness. However, it is important to remember that the other levels of desire we encounter and pass through on the way are not irrelevant. We will never come to know our deepest desire except through attention to the many desires. If we think of our experience in terms of a circle, we stand on the rim, the circumference, where we are in contact with a plurality of feelings, experiences and needs. Not so much in a harmonious, inclusive way, as in a confusing one. "I have so many desires, I don't know what to do with them". But it is in fearless engagement with this confusion rather than simply by some activity of our rational, detached intellect, that we may be moved towards our centre. The many desires are necessary staging posts on a journey towards what is most true in us. Ignatius Loyola, in his Spiritual Exercises (no 23) expressed something of this idea when he suggested that we should relate to created things "to the extent that they help us towards our end." p.107
So this leads us closer to God
"The process of discernment can be understood as a way of moving from the surface of our lives, the place of many desires, to our centre, our soul or our essential self, whatever we prefer to call it. Here, where we are in contact with our deepest desire, we find that we are essentially and simply attuned to God.
The journey of desire moves us beyond a sense of seeking to conform to an understanding of the "will of God" that is arbitrary and totally detached from our actual experience of living. Rather we are drawn ever deeper into God's desiring within our own lives and personalities. This is not static, predetermined or extrinsic to the kind of persons we are. God's desiring in us is expressed in and through what we may come to see as our deepest desires. True, this may initially be seen as being in conflict with more immediately recognisable needs and wants, but God's desires in us do not conflict with our "best interests" or deepest self. The desire we seek to touch and to draw upon has been described by spiritual writers variously as the spark of God in our soul, what God has implanted in us or the truth of our being. But can we always trust our experience of desires? We can if we befriend them and then test them rather than try to ignore them or bypass them. Only by befriending and testing them can we gradually learn how to distinguish deep desires from wants, and the "desires" that are motivated by fear from the desires that are genuinely part of a pattern of consolation." p 117
The effect of reaching our deepest desire
"There are several characteristics present in the experience of moving from "many desires" to "deepest desire" out of which we seek to make life choices. One important feature that people talk about is a deep and lasting contentment beyond transient pleasure. The place of deepest desire is one where we know that we are touching a deep well of peace and truthfulness that speaks of infinity - even if we have passed through disturbance and pain on the way. It is also a place where we engage with what we ultimately realize is intimately associated with our identity. That is why choices made in this place are to do with life directions rather than with the relatively trivial."
It is an encounter with God
"To be even momentarily in our centre, the place of deepest desire, is not necessarily an emotionally intense experience. However, ultimately it is recognised as an encounter with our own spirit and also of what we call God. Such experience is somehow so real that we cannot properly name it. Yet we cannot deny its validity and importance, either. Equally, in its presence we are simply not able to remain unchanged with integrity or with a sense of peace. There is in other words, a dimension of conversion involved. That is what marks such experience out from insights arrived at and decisions made solely with the rational, objective mind." p.120
On Conversion - not just one off but a process...
"The danger of so-called conversion experiences, particularly in our Western consumer culture, is that the language we can use can give the impression that a task has been fully accomplished. We will now live happily ever after. We have arrived at a condition of rest that is human perfection. But in fact the reality is not like this and everything is not under control. Conversion is more likely to mean that things, perhaps for the first time in our lives, get out of control. To be transfigured like Jesus we need to die. But real dying involves losing the illusion of control. That is why it is such a struggle. Conversion is always to another state of provisionality rather than a simple movement from chaos and uncertainty to the rock of final invulnerability.
The goal of the spiritual journey - God - is ever expanding as far as our perceptions are concerned. The experience is not a commodity called "perfection" but a process of being continually filled. It involves responsiveness rather than grasping. For this, we have to give up the search for the horizons we find so necessary as humans - especially tangible progress and visible success. Conversion leads us to respond only to the "coordinates of grace" rather than to expections, our own or other people's.
So conversion is a time of chaos, searching and the loss of paradigms. Yet it is, at the same time, a period of choice and creativity. In its spiritual dimension, true conversion involves both grieving and celebration. AS with all change in general, there is a turning away from something and a turning to a new direction. Too often the popular language of conversion experiences sounds as if all conversion is from sin to grace, from bad things to good things. This is too black and white and it also gives the impression that conversion is essentially only a moral question. As an elderly priest I once knew said in a powerful homily, "I have found that the hardest thing is not to choose between good and bad but between what is good and what is better." p 137
"From childhood onwards, we all have to learn that to grow up involves leaving the familiar and controllable, and travelling through places and experiences that are not familiar. There are where "you are not".
Yet, paradoxically, it is also in this journey through the loss of childhood certainties and securities that we come more and more to a firm sense of our own identity and to our ability to make autonomous choices. In the process of maturing we hopefully move from, whether consciously or not, fulfilling the expectations and desires of others to a greater realization of our own desires and the appropriateness of choosing for ourselves. If we are unwilling to leave the security of which is known we will never arrive anywhere. "To reach satisfaction in all, desire its possession in nothing" If we cannot let go of trying to accumulate many different things, we will never discover what having "all" means" p 102
From many desires to deepest desire
"Because discernment is a journey, we will find ourselves moving, slowly perhaps, from an initial awareness of a multitude of desires, wants and needs (and probably a relatively undiscriminating search for their satisfaction) to the deeper levels of our self. It may also be seen as a movement from awareness of desire to responsible action in the light of that awareness. However, it is important to remember that the other levels of desire we encounter and pass through on the way are not irrelevant. We will never come to know our deepest desire except through attention to the many desires. If we think of our experience in terms of a circle, we stand on the rim, the circumference, where we are in contact with a plurality of feelings, experiences and needs. Not so much in a harmonious, inclusive way, as in a confusing one. "I have so many desires, I don't know what to do with them". But it is in fearless engagement with this confusion rather than simply by some activity of our rational, detached intellect, that we may be moved towards our centre. The many desires are necessary staging posts on a journey towards what is most true in us. Ignatius Loyola, in his Spiritual Exercises (no 23) expressed something of this idea when he suggested that we should relate to created things "to the extent that they help us towards our end." p.107
So this leads us closer to God
"The process of discernment can be understood as a way of moving from the surface of our lives, the place of many desires, to our centre, our soul or our essential self, whatever we prefer to call it. Here, where we are in contact with our deepest desire, we find that we are essentially and simply attuned to God.
The journey of desire moves us beyond a sense of seeking to conform to an understanding of the "will of God" that is arbitrary and totally detached from our actual experience of living. Rather we are drawn ever deeper into God's desiring within our own lives and personalities. This is not static, predetermined or extrinsic to the kind of persons we are. God's desiring in us is expressed in and through what we may come to see as our deepest desires. True, this may initially be seen as being in conflict with more immediately recognisable needs and wants, but God's desires in us do not conflict with our "best interests" or deepest self. The desire we seek to touch and to draw upon has been described by spiritual writers variously as the spark of God in our soul, what God has implanted in us or the truth of our being. But can we always trust our experience of desires? We can if we befriend them and then test them rather than try to ignore them or bypass them. Only by befriending and testing them can we gradually learn how to distinguish deep desires from wants, and the "desires" that are motivated by fear from the desires that are genuinely part of a pattern of consolation." p 117
The effect of reaching our deepest desire
"There are several characteristics present in the experience of moving from "many desires" to "deepest desire" out of which we seek to make life choices. One important feature that people talk about is a deep and lasting contentment beyond transient pleasure. The place of deepest desire is one where we know that we are touching a deep well of peace and truthfulness that speaks of infinity - even if we have passed through disturbance and pain on the way. It is also a place where we engage with what we ultimately realize is intimately associated with our identity. That is why choices made in this place are to do with life directions rather than with the relatively trivial."
It is an encounter with God
"To be even momentarily in our centre, the place of deepest desire, is not necessarily an emotionally intense experience. However, ultimately it is recognised as an encounter with our own spirit and also of what we call God. Such experience is somehow so real that we cannot properly name it. Yet we cannot deny its validity and importance, either. Equally, in its presence we are simply not able to remain unchanged with integrity or with a sense of peace. There is in other words, a dimension of conversion involved. That is what marks such experience out from insights arrived at and decisions made solely with the rational, objective mind." p.120
On Conversion - not just one off but a process...
"The danger of so-called conversion experiences, particularly in our Western consumer culture, is that the language we can use can give the impression that a task has been fully accomplished. We will now live happily ever after. We have arrived at a condition of rest that is human perfection. But in fact the reality is not like this and everything is not under control. Conversion is more likely to mean that things, perhaps for the first time in our lives, get out of control. To be transfigured like Jesus we need to die. But real dying involves losing the illusion of control. That is why it is such a struggle. Conversion is always to another state of provisionality rather than a simple movement from chaos and uncertainty to the rock of final invulnerability.
The goal of the spiritual journey - God - is ever expanding as far as our perceptions are concerned. The experience is not a commodity called "perfection" but a process of being continually filled. It involves responsiveness rather than grasping. For this, we have to give up the search for the horizons we find so necessary as humans - especially tangible progress and visible success. Conversion leads us to respond only to the "coordinates of grace" rather than to expections, our own or other people's.
So conversion is a time of chaos, searching and the loss of paradigms. Yet it is, at the same time, a period of choice and creativity. In its spiritual dimension, true conversion involves both grieving and celebration. AS with all change in general, there is a turning away from something and a turning to a new direction. Too often the popular language of conversion experiences sounds as if all conversion is from sin to grace, from bad things to good things. This is too black and white and it also gives the impression that conversion is essentially only a moral question. As an elderly priest I once knew said in a powerful homily, "I have found that the hardest thing is not to choose between good and bad but between what is good and what is better." p 137
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