Spiritual Yearning

Yearning is described as:  a feeling of intense longing for something.

It sure seems to me that God wants, even yearns to be in relationship with all of humanity. As a matter of fact, the overarching narrative of most sacred texts, what we Christians call the ‘bible”, is about God’s relationship with and within humanity and our response to that relationship, our yearning to know that there is a Divine Presence during this journey we call life. Our yearning to know God and to know that there is a Presence in this life and the next life that will never go deaf to our words or blind to our needs. What we find out is that God is yearning for us to know the Presence as we yearn to know and experience that Presence in the here and now of our history.  

What a beautiful concept and story that is: The story of Jesus the Universal Christ. For more on this I encourage you to read the book by that same name from Fr. Richard Rohre.

What we yearn for is yearning for us. How beautiful, how simple but how complicated we have made it. Jesus, as the embodied, incarnated, Cosmic universal Christ, saying to all of creation, I know you and I want you to know Me.

A mutual co-yearning to know each other deeper and better is the order of the universe.

God wants what we want, peaceful living in harmonious relationship between all of creation. Jesus might call this the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God. Some may call it “kingdom”. I tend to call this the place, heart, essence, realm of God. Or simply God.

If I’m attentive, with ears to hear and eyes to see, I can experience that relational knowing. It is in that space of knowing, God moments some may say, that I can realize the true peace of this relational living.

If we were to sit in quiet reflection, I invite you to do just that, we would realize that our deepest spiritual yearning is to be in close relationship with one another. Married couples know this. Mothers and fathers know this and when we reflect on our own childhood, we know this as well. We all experience this as an infant wanting to know and stay close to that touch of relationship. Most of us know how it feels to have that taken away, that close touch of Love, with the death of a loved one, or to be in a relationship where mutual love is absent.

We all know yearning. Hopefully we all know unconditional love as well. When and where that is absent, I imagine Jesus is weeping.

And when that relationship is broken or impeded by systems or individuals, we have the responsibly of mutual freedom and thriving, love God and neighbor as yourself, to help repair what we have broken as well as work to create a more equality driven society and culture: see the Gospel.

In our Christian tradition we can witness the work of God restoring and repairing what humanity has broken by gazing upon the Cross and the Tomb.

Death repaired to life.

Love crucified by humanity, resurrected by God.

A parable of relationship restored.

A metaphor helping us understand God’s yearning to stay in relationship with us, even if we want to crucify the Body of Love incarnated, God will say no, I must remain so that all of creation can live relationally within Me, even as I eternally live in relationship with/within all of creation.

Maybe if we embrace our own yearning to know God, we can realize God’s own yearning to be in close relationship with us.

In our spirit, in our soul, outside of our extreme dualistic mind, we know this to be true.

As we walk through this journey of life may we know we are in good company, always.