The longing for home will not be satisfied by technology or digital relations. It is built in us by our Creator and yearns for the real reality of husband and wife, parent and child, extended family and abiding friendships. It does not imagine home but builds it whether in house or apartment, establishing the blessing of place alongside the blessing of purpose. The gift of Christianity is not simply the salvation of the individual but the restoration of this blessing in the shape of vocation. The problem of the present is that we attempt to embrace the imagery without adopting the theology of creation, the order and purpose of our lives, and its shape in marriage, family, and home. Art can express many things but the artsy words of pop art fail to deliver to us the things of which they speak.
My grandparents and parents never left home. They flourished where they were planted. They lived not for the pursuit of financial gain or the realization of great dreams but they sought to be stable financially in order to take care of those within their duty and to live as a contributing member of the community of church and community. At my parents funerals, and those of my grandparents, family gathered from all kinds of places to join with the lifetime friends in the community to remember and give thanks that these were part of their home and their lives. In that moment I longed to be part of them but part of me felt much like an outsider. I had left home for college and then to seminary and the wisdom of the Church and the work of the Spirit planted me first on Long Island and then upstate New York and finally Tennessee -- a world away from the small town in which I was nourished. Though I imagined myself one with them, my brother was more than me. I made my home where I was and did not join my labors and love to the place where I had been born.
The playing of sexual desire and gender as if they were toys and the disconnect between our lives and their purpose and shape with the purpose and shape of those who went before us have left us confused and confounded as a people. We long for the very thing we have rejected. We want to be given order in the hope of receiving from it purpose and identity but when confronted with that order we reject it -- forgetting its cost in fueling our longing while keeping us from see that yearning fulfilled. Retreating to our screens and the imaginary places we might belong, we keep alive the yearning while distancing ourselves even more from its fulfillment. It is no wonder that depression is rampant among us nor should it surprise us that our melancholy estate finds its ultimate conclusion in the decision to end our lives when we so decide to end them. The answer does not lie with the digital but with the real, with the surrender of our wills to the Divine Will expressed in the shape of creation, the blessing of redemption, and the purpose of life to glorify God above all things.
When the Church is silent on this part of our life -- the ordered life shaped by God's purpose and will -- we are depriving the people of God of the comfort of knowing their place within God's creation, their purpose grander than self-fulfillment, pleasure, entertainment, or happiness, and their supreme identity as a child of God. When we go to Church, we find ourselves met by the waiting Father who welcomes us home and to an end for the longing and yearning that threatens to consume us.
1 comment:
Indeed, we fallen creatures have an inherent longing for home. We often spend our lives in a state of inner loneliness, searching for meaning, security, quiet spaces, relief from unfulfilled desires, unmet expectations. Our inmost feelings fluctuate like the seasons. Consider how one’s society and entertainment, as expressed in movies, novels and plays, often develops one’s world view and values, giving a glimpse of what could be, of fleeting pleasures and pain and sorrow as well. Whether we reside in the digital world of today, or lived long ago, the same drives, consciousness, and perplexities affect the restless human spirit in its natural state. Writing about his wayward youthful life in “Confessions,” Saint Augustine observes; “ I was much attracted by the theatre, because the plays reflected my own unhappy plight, and were tinder to my fire. Why is it that men enjoy feeling sad at the sight of tragedy and suffering on the stage, although they would be most unhappy if they had to endure the same fate themselves? Yet, they watch the plays because they hope to be made to feel sad, and the feeling of sorrow is what they enjoy. What miserable delirium this is! ….”Yet, when he suffers himself, we call it misery: when he suffers out of sympathy with others, we call it pity.” Furthermore, Augustine hints at the psychological: “This shows that sorrow and tears can be enjoyable. Of course, everyone wants to be happy; but even if no one likes to be sad, is there just the one exception that, because we enjoy pitying others, we welcome their misfortunes, without which we could not pity them.” And later in the “Confessions,” Augustine presents his case for the motives of all humanity, “ Who gathered the bitter sea of humanity into one society? All men are United by one purpose, temporal happiness on earth, and all they do is aimed at this goal, although in the endless variety of their struggles to attain it they pitch and toss like the waves of the sea.” However, when God, “who keeps even the wicked desires of men’s souls within bounds,” acts on the human soul, the result is this, as Augustine points out, “ there are souls that thirst for You, which are in Your eyes set apart from the great main of the sea for a different purpose. These you water with the sweet streams that flow from Your hidden spring , so that the earth too may bear its fruit. You are the Lord its God, and it bears its fruit at Your command.” When the suffering and despairing soul finds Christ, and redemption, though afflicted and tested, the longing for home will not be hindered. Soli Deo Gloria
Post a Comment