There is something about being human that I find endlessly fascinating.
We are almost always reaching for something.
We reach for relationships, for meaningful work, for experiences that make us feel alive. We reach for security, accomplishment, intimacy, and belonging. We imagine that if we could just get through this particular season, accomplish that next goal, find the right relationship, or finally get life organized, something inside us might settle down.
And sometimes it does. For a little while.
Then we find ourselves reaching again.
I recently spent time with a book that I absolutely loved, The Holy Longing by Ronald Rolheiser. Rolheiser is a Catholic priest and one of the most insightful spiritual writers I've encountered. This book is the first in a trilogy exploring Christian spirituality and the journey toward maturity.
What captivated me was where he begins.
He begins with desire.
Rolheiser suggests that deep within every human being is an extraordinary energy, a restlessness, a fire that moves us toward life. We experience it in our longing for love, our hunger for meaning, our desire to create something beautiful, our hope that our lives will somehow matter.
He calls this energy eros.
We often associate that word exclusively with sexuality, but Rolheiser understands eros much more expansively. It is the energy of being alive. It is what draws us toward friendship, creativity, compassion, accomplishment, intimacy, and ultimately toward God.
And here's what I find so compelling.
Every one of us already has a spiritual life because every one of us is trying to figure out what to do with this longing.
Think about that for a moment.
The person who has never entered a church is navigating this longing. The person who prays every morning is navigating it. The person who seems to have everything figured out, and the person whose life is falling apart, are both trying to make sense of the desires moving within them.
Spirituality is already happening.
The question is what kind of people our longing is forming us into.
Rolheiser describes spirituality as the way we channel this energy. Our habits, relationships, commitments, and choices give shape to our desires. Over time, those choices form the people we become.
I find this enormously freeing.
For much of Christian history, spirituality has been presented as something that happens when we enter explicitly religious spaces or engage in certain religious activities. We pray, attend worship, read Scripture, serve, and give.
Those practices matter deeply. I have devoted much of my life to helping people discover their power.
But Rolheiser helps us recognize that the spiritual journey is much larger.
It is taking place when we decide how to respond to someone who has hurt us. It is happening in the way we manage our ambition, respond to disappointment, navigate our sexuality, and care for the people we love. It is present in the ways we spend our money, give our attention, and decide what deserves our energy.
It is happening in every ordinary day of our lives.
At Saint Matthew, we talk a great deal about developing deeply formed lives.
The more I reflect on Rolheiser's work, the more convinced I become that spiritual formation begins with helping people pay attention to the lives they are already living.
What are we longing for?
What gives us energy?
What leaves us empty?
What do we keep reaching toward, hoping it will finally make us whole?
And what might God be inviting us to discover within those desires?
One of the reasons I love Rolheiser's approach is that he refuses to make desire itself the enemy. The Christian spiritual life has sometimes treated our passions as things to distrust or suppress. But the very energy that can pull us toward destructive habits can also become the energy that moves us toward compassion, creativity, and love.
The invitation is to learn how to live with that fire.
I am increasingly convinced that many of us have spent years trying to answer the wrong spiritual questions. We have worried about whether we believe the right things, know enough about the Bible, or practice our faith correctly.
Meanwhile, the deeper question has been waiting patiently beneath the surface.
Is the way I am living making me more loving, more whole, more generous, and more fully alive?
That's a question worth sitting with.
Rolheiser's book is often connected with the foundational stage of the spiritual journey, the first third of life. But I suspect that most of us arrive at the middle and later seasons of life still carrying lessons we never fully learned.
We have grown older. We have experienced success and disappointment. We have built relationships, families, careers, and communities.
And that ancient longing is still there.
Maybe it's worth listening to it again.
The longing itself has something to teach us….God has been present within that longing all along.
