There is a divine restlessness in the human heart. Though our bodies maintain an outer stability and consistency, the heart is an eternal nomad. No circle of belonging can ever contain all the longings of the human heart. As Shakespeare said, we have “immortal longings.” All human creativity issues from the urgency of longing. Literally and physically, each of us is a child of longing—conceived in the passionate desire of our parents for each other. All growth is the desire of the soul to refine and enlarge its presence. The human body is a temple of sensuous spirit. In every moment our senses reach out in longing to engage the world. Movement, colour, and shape engage the affections of the eye; tone, sound, and silence call continually to our hearing; touch, fragrance, and taste also bring us into intimacy with the world. Our sensuous longing is inevitably immediate and passionate: the caress on the skin, the twilight that enthrals your seeing, Fauré’s
In the inner world, thoughts are, as Meister Eckhart said “our inner senses.” The eros of thought is the longing that voyages inwards to discover the secret landscapes of soul, mind, and memory. Through our thoughts, we discover who we are and which presences inhabit our hearts. Thought puts a face on experience and probes the mystery of things. It looks below the surface and seeks the substance. Everything humans have done on earth is an expression of thought. Without thinking none of it would have happened. From the ancient monuments to modern architecture, from the cave paintings to e-mail, from the Druids to modern ritual, human thought has continually incarnated human longing. The world that we have fashioned with its history and culture expresses the diversity and complexity of human longing. Work is human desire in action.
Many of the really powerful forces in contemporary culture work to seduce human longing along the pathways of false satisfaction. When our longing becomes numbed, our sense of belonging becomes empty and cold; this intensifies the sense of isolation and distance that so many people now feel. Consumerism is the worship of the god of quantity; advertising is its liturgy. Advertising is schooling in false longing. More and more the world of image claims our longing. Image is mere surface veneer. It is no wonder that there is such a crisis of belonging now since there is no homeland in this external world of image and product. It is a famine field of the Spirit. Despite all the energy and development that have taken place many areas in modern life are losing their nature and grace.
The restlessness in the human heart will never be finally stilled by any person, project, or place. The longing is eternal. This is what constantly qualifies and enlarges our circles of belonging. There is a constant and vital tension between longing and belonging. Without the shelter of belonging, our longings would lack direction, focus, and context; they would be aimless and haunted, constantly tugging the heart in a myriad of opposing directions. Without belonging, our longing would be demented. As memory gathers and anchors time, so does belonging shelter longing. Belonging without longing would be empty and dead, a cold frame around emptiness. One often notices this in relationships where the longing has died; they have become arrangements, and there is no longer any shared or vital presence. When longing dies, creativity ceases. The arduous task of being a human is to balance longing and belonging so that they work with and against each other to ensure that all the potential and gifts that sleep in the clay of the heart may be awakened and realized in this one life. All our longing is but an eternal echo of the Divine Longing which has created us and sustains us here. Sheltered within the embrace of that Great Belonging we can dare to let our longing lead us towards the mountain of transfiguration.
In Greek mythology, the theme of longing and belonging finds poignant expression in the story of Echo. The nymph called Echo could only use her voice in repetition of another. Echo was one of the many who fell in love with the beautiful Narcissus. One day, she secretly follows Narcissus as he goes out hunting with friends, and although she longs to address him, she is unable to do so because she cannot speak first. Her chance to speak comes when Narcissus loses his friends. Alone and isolated, he calls and Echo seizes the opportunity to speak by repeating his words back to him. But when Narcissus calls to his friends, “Let us come together here,” Echo misunderstands him and, rushing to embrace him, reveals herself. Narcissus brutally rejects her and she is doomed to spend the rest of her life pining in demented longing for him.
