This Sunday is Happy New Year and 8th Day of Christmas! It is a time for looking back and a time for looking forward. I want to look forward with you for a moment. After a probationary year in a Benedictine monastery, the novice monk is asked by the abbot, “What do you seek?” It is the same question Jesus asked his novice disciples.
The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. Jesus turned to them and said to them, “What are you seeking?” John 1.37-38.
What am I seeking? What are we seeking? Our longings, our aches, our desires are indications of our heart’s orientation. James K.A. Smith posits that, more than…
I think therefore I am (Enlightenment/age of rationalism)
I feel therefore I am (modern therapeutic age)
“I am what I love,” is the most revelatory of where we are going, what habits we will form, what we will value, how we will live, and what we consider the good life.
Take exercise, for instance, a classic New Year’s subject. Why do you begin an exercising regimen? Because you want to. You want to feel better. You want to look better. You want to live longer. You want to lose weight. You want to go on a trip and have the stamina for sightseeing.
Why do you stop your exercising regimen? Because you want to. You want to eat ice cream. You want to sit on the couch. You want to watch tv. You want to put on a few pounds for warmth.
Our desires are destiny. The question is, is my desire rightly ordered or disordered? That will have to be another article. For now, it might be helpful to consider what you desire. What do you seek? For what does your heart ache?
My favorite poem this last year is more of a benediction. For Longing is by John O’Donohue:
blessed be the longing that brought you here
and quickens your soul with wonder.
may you have the courage to listen to the voice of desire
that disturbs you when you have settled for something safe.
may you have the wisdom to enter generously into your own unease
to discover the new direction your longing wants you to take.
may the forms of your belonging – in love, creativity, and friendship –
be equal to the grandeur and the call of your soul.
may the one you long for long for you.
may your dreams gradually reveal the destination of your desire.
may a secret providence guide your thought and nurture your feeling.
may your mind inhabit your life with the sureness
with which your body inhabits the world.
may your heart never be haunted by ghost-structures of old damage.
may you come to accept your longing as divine urgency.
may you know the urgency with which God longs for you.
Happy New Year, dear ones. May your longings be rightly ordered by the God who longs for you.
Nathan