Psalm 84

2 How lovely your dwelling, O LORD of hosts!

3 My soul yearns and pines for the courts of the LORD. My heart and flesh cry out for the living God.

St. Augustine on Restless Hearts

From The Confessions of St. Augustine

"You awaken us to delight in your praise; for you made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you."

Psalm 130

6 My soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.

C.S. Lewis: Made for Another World

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." --C.S. Lewis

Aldous Huxley on Desire as Potential Obstacle

"Uncontrolled, the hunger and thirst after God may become an obstacle, cutting off the soul from what it desires. If a man would travel far along the mystic road, he must learn to desire God intensely but in stillness, passively and yet with all his heart and mind and strength."

--Aldous Huxley

Chesterton on Brothel Doors

“Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God”. G.K. Chesterton

Old Poetry Surfaces

I'll be adding some poetry written in the 1980s to the blog over the next few weeks and applying approximate dates. They therefore won't show up as new entries. To check them out, go to the Poetry label, or look in the archive for previous years.

Chesterton on Valleys

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.-- G. K. Chesterton

Tolstoy Defines Boredom

Boredom: the desire for desires.--Leo Tolstoy

C.S. Lewis on Longing

“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust in them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers.” C.S. Lewis

Samuel Smiles on Anticipation

An intense anticipation itself transforms possibility into reality; our desires being often but precursors of the things which we are capable of performing.--Samuel Smiles

Nelson Mandela on the Journey

"There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires."--Nelson Mandela

Kahlil Gibran on Vision and Desire

I prefer to be a dreamer among the humblest, with visions to be realized, than lord among those without dreams and desires.--Kahlil Gibran

William Blake on Desire

Those who restrain their desires, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.--William Blake

St. Augustine Commentary on 1John

From the Tractates on the first letter of John by Saint Augustine:

“The entire life of a good Christian is in fact an exercise of holy desire. You do not yet see what you long for, but the very act of desiring prepares you, so that when he comes you may see and be utterly satisfied. Suppose you are going to fill some holder or container, and you know you will be given a large amount. Then you set about stretching your sack or wineskin or whatever it is. Why? Because you know the quantity you will have to put in it and your eyes tell you there is not enough room. By stretching it, therefore, you increase the capacity of the sack, and this is how God deals with us. Simply by making us wait he increases our desire, which in turn enlarges the capacity of our soul, making it able to receive what is to be given to us.”

May 30 Note: I just saw this quote cited as being from St. Augustine as well. Guess I'd better do more digging!

Augustine to Proba on Prayer and Desire

From a letter to Proba by Saint Augustine, bishop (Ep. 130, 8. 15. 17—9, 18: CSEL 44, 56–57. 59–60)
Office of Readings for Sunday in the Twentyninth Week of the Year.

So that we might obtain this life of happiness, he who is true life itself taught us to pray, not in many words as though speaking longer could gain us a hearing. After all, we pray to one who, as the Lord himself tells us, knows what we need before we ask for it.

Why he should ask us to pray, when he knows what we need before we ask him, may perplex us if we do not realize that our Lord and God does not want to know what we want (for he cannot fail to know it) but wants us rather to exercise our desire through our prayers, so that we may be able to receive what he is preparing to give us. His gift is very great indeed, but our capacity is too small and limited to receive it. That is why we are told: Enlarge your desires, do not bear the yoke with unbelievers.

The deeper our faith, the stronger our hope, the greater our desire, the larger will be our capacity to receive that gift, which is very great indeed. No eye has seen it; it has no color. No ear
has heard it; it has no sound. It has not entered man’s heart; man’s heart must enter into it.
In this faith, hope and love we pray always with unwearied desire. However, at set times and seasons we also pray to God in words, so that by these signs we may instruct ourselves and
mark the progress we have made in our desire, and spur ourselves on to deepen it. The more fervent the desire, the more worthy will be its fruit. When the Apostle tells us: Pray without
ceasing, he means this: Desire unceasingly that life of happiness which is nothing if not eternal, and ask it of him who alone is able to give it.

CS Lewis on Desire

From "The Weight of Glory"

...Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

Lack of Holy Desire

I want deliberately to encourage this mighty longing after God. The lack of it has brought us to our present low estate. The stiff and wooden quality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of holy desire.

-- A. W. Tozer

St. Anselm Proslogion, Chapter 1

Encouraging the Mind to Contemplate God

Come on now little man, get away from your worldly occupations for a while, escape from your tumultuous thoughts. Lay aside your burdensome cares and put off your laborious exertions. Give yourself over to God for a little while, and rest for a while in Him. Enter into the cell of your mind, shut out everything except God and whatever helps you to seek Him once the door is shut. Speak now, my heart, and say to God, "I seek your face; your face, Lord, I seek."

Come on then, my Lord God, teach my heart where and how to seek you, where and how to find you. Lord, if you are not here, where shall I find you? If, however, you are everywhere, why do I not see you here? But certainly you dwell in inaccessible light. And where is that inaccessible light? Or how do I reach it? Or who will lead me to it and into it, so that I can see you in it? And then by what signs, under what face shall I seek you? I have never seen you, my Lord God, or known your face. What shall I do, Highest Lord, what shall this exile do, banished far from you as he is? What should your servant do, desperate as he is for your love yet cast away from your face? He longs to see you, and yet your face is too far away from him. He wants to come to you, and yet your dwelling place is unreachable. He yearns to discover you, and he does not know where you are. He craves to seek you, and does not know how to recognize you. Lord, you are my Lord and my God, and I have never seen you. You have made me and nurtured me, given me every good thing I have ever received, and I still do not know you. I was created for the purpose of seeing you, and I still have not done the thing I was made to do.

Oh, how miserable man's lot is when he has lost what he was made for! Oh how hard and dire was that downfall! Alas, what did he lose and what did he find? What was taken away and what remains? He has lost beatitude for which he was made, and he has found misery for which he was not made. That without which he cannot be happy has been taken away, and that remains which in itself can only make him miserable. Back then man ate the bread of angels for which he now hungers, and now he eats the bread of griefs which he did not even know back then. Alas for the common grief of man, the universal lamentation of Adam's sons! He belched in his satiety, while we sigh in our want. He was rich, we are beggars. He happily possessed and miserably abandoned, we unhappily lack and miserably desire, yet alas, we remain empty. Why, since it would have been easy for him, did he not keep what we so disastrously lack? Why did he deprive us of light, and cover us with darkness instead? Why did he take life away from us and inflict death instead? From what have we poor wretches been expelled, and toward what are we being driven? From what have we been cast down, in what buried? From our fatherland into exile, from the vision of God into blindness. From the happiness of immortality into the bitterness and horror of death. What a miserable transformation! From so much good into so much evil! A heavy injury, a heavy, heavy grief.

I have come to you as a poor man to a rich one, as a poor rich to a merciful giver. May I not return empty and rejected! And if "I sigh before I eat" (Job 3:4), once I have sighed give me something to eat. Lord, turned in (incurvatus) as I am I can only look down, so raise me up so that I can look up. "My iniquities heaped on my head" cover me over and weigh me down "like a heavy load" (Ps. 37:5). Dig me out and set me free before "the pit" created by them "shuts its jaws over me" (Ps. 67:16).Let me see your light, even if I see it from afar or from the depths. Teach me to seek you, and reveal yourself to this seeker. For I cannot seek you unless you teach me how, nor can I find you unless you show yourself to me. Let me seek you in desiring you, and desire you in seeking you. Let me find you in loving you and love you in finding you.

I acknowledge, Lord, and I give thanks that you have created in me this your image, so that I can remember you, think about you and love you. But it is so worn away by sins, so smudged over by the smoke of sins, that it cannot do what it was created to do unless you renew and reform it. I do not even try, Lord, to rise up to your heights, because my intellect does not measure up to that task; but I do want to understand in some small measure your truth, which my heart believes in and loved. Nor do I seek to understand so that I can believe, but rather I believe so that I can understand. For I believe this too, that "unless I believe I shall not understand" (Isa. 7:9).

Poetry: Scent of a Shepherd

Scent of a Shepherd

From the nightmare I wake
in pain and motion.

The world passes by upside down
an undulating sea of blue sky.

My contorted body screams
unused to the position
and broken bones.

My hair swings low
swaying with every step
blocking the sight of his sandaled feet.

His stride is long and even
shoulders miraculously broad;
my weight unequal to the cross.

My arms hang loose as I wonder;
should I hang on?

Does it hurt?

Do his stretching arms
remind him of the wood?

Does he thirst?

Wrapped as a collar round his muscled neck
borne like a yoke neither easy nor light.

Bitter streams of tears flow over my brow.
I should be in the dust before him
wiping his feet with my grief-soaked hair.

Instead, he carries me.

From the precipice he rescues me.
As I lunge for the edge
he draws me back.

To stop my fighting
he breaks my legs.

Despite my cries he lifts me
drapes me
carries me.

.

.

.

I breathe the scent of him
of sheep and wood
of blood and wine
of bread and man
of sun and moon and stars
of eternity
of home.

His cadence soothes.
The sweat of his exertion sweet
as opium; intoxicating.

My sobs relent.

I turn my ear to his chest
full of his scent
and listen to the drumbeat of dawn’s creation
the thrumming of the universe;
God’s heart beating against my cheek.

And I rest.

May 2008