Holy Longing

As I spoke with a friend about trying to negotiate and acknowledge my feelings, joys, and how I chose to numb the pain, a friend invited me to start reading The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality by Ronald Rolheiser. He was hooked based on the quote by Henri Nouwen in the introduction:  

...It seems that there is no such thing as a clear-cut pure joy, but that even in the most happy moments of our existence we sense a tinge of sadness. In every satisfaction, there is an awareness of limitations. In every success, there is a fear of jealousy. Behind every smile, there is a tear. In every embrace, there is loneliness. In every friendship, there is distance. And, in all forms of light, there is the knowledge of surrounding darkness... But this intimate experience in which every bit of life is touched by a bit of death can point us beyond the limits of our existence. It can do so by making us look forward in expectation to the day when our hearts will be filled with perfect joy, a joy that no one shall take away from us. 

It was tempting to stop reading; I was sated contemplating this thought alone. Then I pressed into Chapter 1, where statements like “Desire, our Fundamental Dis-Ease" and “Desire is always stronger than satisfaction” urged further discovery. 

I love buying used books with user notes and highlights. Yet Rolheiser seems to spark enough conversations with simple questions throughout his work, “What is Spirituality?”, “What gives music a soul?”, and “Where is it that we most struggle to channel creatively our erotic and spiritual energies?”. 

One particular conversation he invites is about pornography, the power it wields, and our naivety through the overstimulation it causes. Rolheiser writes, “We see nothing wrong in exposing ourselves to it in all its rawness.” 

I’d love to discuss the topics further. Perhaps we could share a cup of coffee too.