I think it is this desire that Paul spoke of when he tried to explain the unknown God to the Athenians: “It is God who gives to all people life and breath and all things… God created us to seek God, with the hope that we might grope after God through the shadows of our ignorance, and find God.” The psalms are full of expressions of deep longing for God: thirsting, hungering, yearning. And God promises a response: “When you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me.”
For me, the energy of our basic desire for God is the human spirit, planted within us and nourished endlessly by the Holy Spirit of God. In this light, the spiritual significance of addiction is not just that we lose freedom through attachment to things, nor even that things so easily become our ultimate concerns. Of much more importance is that we try to fulfill our longing for God through objects of attachment. For example, God wants to be our perfect lover, but instead we seek perfection in human relationships and are disappointed when our lovers cannot love us perfectly. God wants to provide our ultimate security, but we seek our safety in power and possessions and then find we must continually worry about them. We seek satisfaction of our spiritual longing in a host of ways that may have very little to do with God. And, sooner or later, we are disappointed. pp. 92-93
My reflection:
Recently, I missed a connecting flight by five minutes, costing me four hours. It was a busy 4th of July weekend. To add to the misfortune, my phone could not connect to the internet. I was reduced to reading or watching the crowd pass by.
I noticed we all were in uniform of one sort or another: airline employees, security, restaurant workers, the summer casual wardrobe of most, the robes of Africa, the Moslem burka, the Jewish yarmulke, boy scouts, clergy and nuns and many more.
I began to reflect that our clothing is directed, in the end, to our quest for happiness. It was clear watching the seemingly endless parade of people that we are going in many different directions at many different levels of life. Regardless of our immediate destination, all are searching for happiness. The happiness that does not pass away is only found in God, our true destiny.
May is brilliant in his clarity that this search really is rooted in a basic human hunger for completion in God. Attachments and addictions are the chief distortions blocking the transparency of this universal longing.
A basic openness to life is rooted in the call of grace to return to our true home. To the extent that we seek authenticity in life, we will come to realize God is seeking us more than we are seeking God. This opens up a path that demands a continual conversion, a resetting of priorities, a casting off the attachments and addictions.
May’s central insight calls us to surface the distortions and blinding effects of our addictions. The movement from slavery to freedom, the true pursuit of God, combines our effort and God’s grace. Every other possible happiness slowly fades away in the light of this great mission to satisfy the true hunger in our hearts. Ultimately, when the heart is brought to completion in total freedom, we will all have the same clothing, the uniform of love.
