The Holy Longing
I have picked up a book entitiled "The Holy Longing" by Ronald Rolheiser and have been deeply intrigued by his opening chapter. It is a book dedicated to the search for spirituality.
His opening chapter is basically a look at the definition of spirituality. He takes the view that humans, by their very nature are restless and at a fundamental dis-ease in this world. There is a fire that burns in each one - a fire that drives us; an unquenchable desire. This desire, he states can show itself as an aching pain or a delicious hope. Spirituality is ultimately what we do with that desire.Spirituality is not something on the fringes, an option for those with a particular bent. None of us has a choice. Everyone has to have a spirituality and everyone does have one, either a life giving one or a destructive one. No one has the luxury of choosing here because all of us are precisely fired into life with a certain madness that comes from the gods and we have to do something with that. What we do with that madness is our spirituality. Hence, spirituality is not about serenely picking or choosing certain spiritual activities like going to church, praying or meditating, reading spiritual books, or setting off on some explicit spiritual quest. It is far more basic than that. Long before we do anything explicitly religious at all, we have to do something about the fire that burns within us. What we do with that fire, how we channel it, is our spirituality. It is more about whether we can sleep at night than whether or not we go to church. It is about being integrated or falling apart, about being within community or being lonely, about being in harmony with Mother Earth or being alienated from her. Irrespective of whether or not we let ourselves be consciously shaped by any explicit religious idea, we act in ways that leave us either healthy or unhealthy, loving or bitter. What shapes our actions is our spirituality. (p6-7)
This is but a short taste of his offerings but it has been a very helpful piece for my own reflection. In my quest for addressing the spiritual in life, I have often been left feeling guilty for not doing the right things in the right way at the right time - or feeling the right way when I was doing them. Rolheiser offers a helpful view for me. I wonder what it would look like if, as we engage others in conversation around spirituality, we were to begin by discussing desires and passions and the fire that burns in us as opposed to our religious activity.
Either way, I look forward to the remainder of this read and I welcome your comments or reactions.
