Hunger

 

If you bring forth what is within you, then what you bring forth will save you. And if you do not bring forth what is within you, what you don't bring forth will destroy you."

Gospel of Thomas

Spring is the season of hunger. The deer are desperate for new green shoots, the roots for water, the buds for the sun.  I hunger for sunlight, movement, compassion for myself and the forgotten.  I hunger for an end to these wars, the violence against women, connection to the ineffable majesty of the divine, beyond myself, God. Our hungers are holy and (w)holly of us and beyond us.  What we hunger for must exist even before we know what is possible.  To long for intimacy, affection, love, God is to know these things already exist. We are made for longing.  Whatever hungers are emerging from our innermost selves should be honored, treated with tenderness, and an understanding that to take the first small step towards them is all that we need to do, all that we must do.

To be hungry in these ways is a blessing. To be satisfied on the spiritual plain is to settle for much less than what is amazing, mysterious, inspiring, and unknown. To be fed by the spirit we must first cross the threshold into longing.  Happiness and comfort are no longer the goals but only resting points along the way to growth and in that growth the pain of longing for what has yet to be transformed.

For a long while, I longed for comfort.  This was part of my journey, a longing for a safe place of satisfaction, fullness, material wealth, and comfort.  In an attempt to manifest this, I and life failed me and failed me again.  But what unfolded in that failing was a showing of a deeper longing for growth, purpose, transformation, and connection.  I had to let go of programs for happiness, comfort, avoidance of fear, control to enter into the falling into the unknown, the discomforting, the painful, the darkness. Because inside of me is both light and darkness, home for the tender resting seed, the new filaments of root, the tender shoots who travel an eternity towards the hope of light.