THOUGHTS

April 27, 2020

Keeping track of days is like trying to hold water in one's hand.

April, 2014

LONGING

"Longing is the deepest and most ancient voice in the human soul.  It is the secret source of all presence, and the driving force of all creativity and imagination: longing keeps the door open and calls towards us the gifts and blessings which our lives dream."

"Longing is a quality of desire which distance or duration evokes.  In other words, your longing reaches out into the distance to unity you with whatever or whosoever you heart desires.  Longing awakens when there is a feeling that someone or something is away from you.  It is interesting that the word, 'desire,' comes from the Latin, 'desiderare,' which originally meant 'to ceases to see.'  This suggested a sense of absence and the desire to seek and find the absent one.  Deep down, we desire to come back into the intimate unity of belonging."

John O'Donodine

This is the door that most fiction walks through, 

plots that are driven by longing,
the angst of romance.

What is not fiction is Easter which gives hope to the longing in our hearts.  We can never be completely at home here.  Yes, He has given us His Holy Spirit, the Comforter, so that He has not left us comfortless to fulfill His promise to never leave us nor forsake us; but we know that we were made for another time, another place with Him.  All this is temporary, the waiting room for heaven, the wooing, the romance.  He is preparing a place for us as for a bride, a beautiful  picture of the Beloved preparing for her arrival, making sure everything is just as He wants to give to her.

"The giving up of thoughts leads to the giving up of the personal self.  In his quiet moments a man hears in the depths of his being a voice which tells him that he comes from a country to which one day he must return."  Paul Burton.  

Jesus said, "Where I go, you cannot follow Me now; 

but you shall follow me later."  

John 13:36 

"I will not leave you as orphans.  

I will come to you."  

John 14:18.  

This world is not our home.  That is why a piece of our heart is always missing, an ache that cannot be completely satisfied.  We are going someplace.  It is as if we are children playing at dusk outside with the fireflies until at supper time we hear the call to come home.

"Our hearts were made for you, O God,

and they shall not rest until they rest in you."

St. Augustine