On a fall-ish day at a Leawood Campus staff team retreat at the beautiful Overland Park Arboretum, this question was asked by a spiritual director who came to speak with us. If you aren’t familiar with spiritual directors, these are Christians who have received training to help their fellow believers recognize, listen to, and follow the voice of the Holy Spirit in their lives. In language from an earlier era, they are fellow “pilgrims on the way”; Christian sisters and brothers intentionally pointing us in Jesus’ direction to help us have the courage and attentiveness to follow his way.
I invited the spiritual director to help us grow to be with Jesus before we try to do anything for Jesus. When she asked “What do you really desire?”, she didn’t ask it to help us think about our great hopes or some great dreams for our lives. There was no visionary dreaming in it. She asked the question about something more strange: our prayer lives. She repeated herself again: “What do you really desire when you go to God in prayer?” This tiny question struck me and for the rest of the day it was like a bee just hovering around my head. I couldn’t get away from it.
After lunch I walked around the arboretum and settled at what I deemed was the perfect bench to spend some time “being” with Jesus and practicing what we learned that morning. It took five minutes for me to realize I had been sent down a proverbial prayer rabbit trail. Here are the questions I began to ask: Can I trust my desires in prayer? Which of my desires come from holy longings and unholy longings? What does Jesus want to show me about myself as I’m honest about my desires in prayer? When and why do I silence my desires? Do I really trust Jesus in prayer with my deepest desires?
Desire and Christian Spirituality
It was the word desire that stuck out to me. Why that word? What makes desire so important in prayer? I recently read a book called: The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality by Ronald Rohleiser. I was actually encouraged to read it by a Leawood congregant and interestingly, Rohleiser starts his book with this same topic: desire. In his framework, desire is central to all spirituality, and in particular, to Christian spiritual practices. Here’s what he writes on page one:
There is within us a fundamental dis-ease, an unquenchable fire that renders us incapable, in this life, of ever coming to full peace. This desire lies at the center of our lives, in the marrow of our bones, and in the deep recesses of the soul. We are not easeful human beings who occasionally get restless, serene persons who once in a while are obsessed by desire. The reverse is true…Desire is the straw that stirs the drink.
For Rolheiser, desire is core to all things “spiritual.” Essentially, our spirituality is made up of what we do with our desires and how we act upon them. It’s why, in a way, the axiom “I’m spiritual but not religious” makes some kind of sense; whenever someone is acting upon their restlessness, their pains, their hopes, they are doing something with their desires, and that is in effect, their “spirituality.”
What then is a “Christian spirituality”? His answer:
Desire makes us act and when we act what we do will either lead to a greater integration or disintegration within our personalities, minds, and bodies—and to the strengthening or deterioration of our relationship to God…the habits and disciplines we use to shape our desires form the basis for a [Christian] spirituality….
At first, I was suspicious of this part. But here’s where it clicked a bit more for me: prayer is a place, actually it’s the place, to explore our deepest desires: to discern the health or unhealth of them and to find the satiation, or rather, the fulfillment of them.
Augustine and Desire
As I continued on this thought trail, Augustine and his brilliant work came to mind. Desire is a major theme in Confessions which is probably Augustine’s most famous work. In fact, desire is what he is getting at when he wrote that oft-quoted phrase: “You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”
If it is indeed our complex and overwhelming desires that stir up inner restlessness, then it is only in communion with God, primarily through prayer and other spiritual practices, that we offer up our many desires and then the restlessness caused by them in order to find God’s rest over time.
But there’s actually another place in Confessions where I think Augustine speaks even more clearly to desire.
What do I love when I love my God?… It’s not physical beauty or temporal glory or the brightness of light dear to earthly eyes, or the sweet melodies of all kinds of songs, or the gentle odor of flowers and ointments and perfumes, or manna or honey, or limbs welcoming the embraces of the flesh; it is not these I love when I love my God.
Yet there is a light I love, and a food, and a kind of embrace when I love my God—a light, voice, odor, food, embrace of my innerness, where my soul is floodlit by light which space cannot contain, where there is sound that time cannot seize, where there is perfume which no breeze disperses, where there is a taste for food no amount of eating can lessen, where there is a bond of union that no satiety can part. That is what I love when I love my God.
What is Augustine talking about here? My interpretation: all of his very human desires can be met, even more powerfully than all things human, by the love of God himself. It’s that reality that draws him to the conclusion that all of his desires actually point him to what must be his one greatest desire: the love of God. And, the love of God must be the only thing that can ultimately satiate his desires.
Exploring Our Desires With God in Prayer
Here’s my point: I wonder how many Christians expect prayer to be the place we silence, escape from, or rid ourselves of our desires. Desires are complex, conflicting, and overwhelming. It’s difficult to discern where some ends and others begin. Our hearts are shadowy places. And because of that, we are restless. Do we expect that God wants, can, and will take our desires from us and save us from our restlessness?
Maybe our initial reaction is that prayer is the place to purge ourselves of all human, even worldly desire. If that is our expectation, then I think Augustine would say, that’s not actually a “Christian spirituality” or a “Christian” hope for prayer. Is Christian spirituality an escape from desire? No. It is a fulfillment of all desire. A satiation of all desire. A telos to all desire. A desire that takes up and then orders and disciplines all other desires.
What if prayer is not the place where God immediately takes our desires from us or even helps us silence them? What if God wants to work with and through our desires? What if our desires, even very human ones, are things that we need to become curious about with God as our process partner? Maybe our desires point us to the transcendent reality that God is the one who gave us many of our desires. Maybe God wants to meet us in them and transform, mold, and use them. Maybe there are unholy and unhealthy desires that God does want to purge from us. But even that is freeing…it’s him who wants to do the freeing…not us freeing ourselves.
Here are some examples of this kind of prayer: God, can I trust this desire? What’s at the core of this desire? What about this is pointing me to you and what isn’t? What’s keeping me from trusting you with this desire? Do I believe you can satisfy me even more than what I think is the object of my desire?
For Augustine, this is much of the journey of prayer: an invitation to explore your desires and see how they are pruned to find their fulfillment in God alone. This is ultimately practical in prayer habits, disciplines, and practices. And the invitation is there for all of us.
