Gerald May, in his classic, Addiction and Grace, offers us great and valuable insights on the obstacles within us on our Pilgrimage to God. He shows that all of suffer from addictions that rob our freedom and block our quest for God.
The following “Bit of Wisdom” is a selection for his text with some reflections.
P# 1
After twenty years of listening to the yearnings of people’s hearts, I am convinced that all human beings have an inborn desire for God. Whether we are consciously religious or not, this desire is our deepest longing and our most precious treasure. It gives us meaning. Some of us have repressed this desire, burying it beneath so many other interests that we are completely unaware of it. Or we may experience it in differente ways – as a longing for wholeness, completion, or fulfillment. Regardless of how we describe it, it is a longing for love. It is a hunger of love, to be lover, and to move closer to the source of love. This yearning is the essence of the human spirit; it is the origin of our highest hopes and most noble dreams.
Modern theology describes this desire as God given. In an outpouring of love, God creates us and plants the seeds of this desire within us. Then, throughout our lives, God nourishes this desire, drawing us toward fulfillment of the two great commandments: “Thou shalt love thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself.” If we could claim our longing for love as the true treasure of our hearts, we would, with God’s grace, be able to live these commandments.
But something gets in the way. Not only are we unable to fulfill the commandments; we often even ignore our desire to do so. The longing at the center of our hearts repeatedly disappears from our awareness, and its energy is usurped by forces that are not at all loving. Our desires are captured, and we give ourselves over to things that, in our deepest honesty, we really do not want. There are times when each of us can easily identify with the words of the apostle Paul: “I do not understand my own behavior; I do not act as I mean to, but I do the things that I hate. Though the will to do what is good is in me, the power to do it is not; the good thing I want to do, I never do; the evil thing which I do not want – that is what I do.”
In writing these words, Paul was talking about sin. Theologically, sin is what turns us away from love – away from love for ourselves, away from love for one another, and away from love for God. When I look at this problem psychologically, I see two forces that are responsible: repression and addiction. Of the two, repression is by far the milder one.
My reflection # 1:
All human beings have a common desire: to be happy. Each human life is filled with stories of the universal search. Our hearts are wired to the common program: searching for happiness. Teresa of Avila found herself in this common dilemma. She put it this way “I wanted to live but I had no one to give me life.” The Way of Perfection (19.12)
She had run into the universal human expereince. In the end, no created reality will be enough for a heart that was made for God. From the gifts under the Christmas tree to graduating from school to finding a new job and even didcovering the love of our life, these are all partial and incomplete. They fail to satisfy the human hunger with any sense of completeness and finality.
The heart was made for God. We are all caught in the falsehoods and deceptions that direct us to the false gods that permeate our reallity. Jesus called us to conversion. We need to cast off the lies and illusions to save our life. We need to purify our mind and heart to eventually achieve some clarity and unity in the desires of our heart.
May’s messagee in Addiction and Grace helps us understand what is goiing on when we struggle for the happiness we long for. It finally will be ours when we we find the God who is passionately seeking us. In particular, May lays out the need to deal with addictions, big and small, as a singular obstacle in our quest for God.
Reflection #2
“Thee Carmelite tradition attempts to name the hunger, give words to the desire and express the journey’s end in God. The human heart will forver need this clarilfication of it wants. Carmel has wanted the same thing and will walk with anyone who is met along the way. We cannot satisfy their hunger, but can help them find words for it and know where it points. We can do it, and have done it, in art, in poitry and song, in counseling and teaching, in simply lisening and understanding. And we can warn people that eventuallyl all words fail and at times all we have is the desire itself. ( John welch, O. Carm., Seasons of the Heart. P.2)
Reflection #3
“Theolgian Bernard Lonergan believed that if we follow the trail of our deepest desires, expressing them in truth, facing them, and responding to their call in or lves, we will undergo conversions. Our wants, our desires will be purified and transformed, until more and more we want what God wants in a consonance of desire.” (John Welch O. Carm., Seasons of the Heart p. 4.)
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