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O Come, You Longing Thirsty Souls
I want to tell you a story about one of my heroes--my mother. Julie Cuthbertson Clarkson seemed like a typical suburban wife and mother in Charlotte, North Carolina in the early 1960's. She drove carpools, taught Sunday School and did some volunteer work. She did what was expected of her. Sometimes when the frustrations of caring for children overwhelmed her, she would say to us in exasperation "I was a person before I was a mother!" Of course we didn't believe her.
When I was in high school, everything changed. One day my father told my mother that he no longer loved her, and was moving out. After twenty years of marriage, her world was shaken. She wanted to work on the marriage, but my father's mind was already made up. The next couple of years were difficult ones for my mom, as she tried to make some sense of her own life while still being responsible for raising three teenagers.
These events caused my mom to look deeply into her life, to touch her hopes and longings. She says this was a painful time, and also a time she felt very much alive. Several years later, I was living in a fraternity house in Chapel Hill. My mom moved into an apartment nine miles away, and began her studies at Duke Divinity School. She was later ordained into the Episcopal priesthood, and served four different churches before retiring a couple of years ago.
My mother wouldn't have chosen the events that changed her life, but I think she would say that through them she found her true self. Her willingness to start over, to find grace in the midst of loss, inspires me. I think of that paradoxical saying of Jesus: "Those who try to make their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it" (Luke 17:33).
Though I never really thought that I was following in my mother's footsteps, I am in divinity school myself, preparing for the Unitarian Universalist ministry. I see now that we both have been led by our longings to make some significant life changes. A few years ago I was having lunch with my minister, Marta Flanagan. I told her that I felt underemployed in my work as a commercial photographer, that my gifts weren't being used. She looked me straight in the eye. "Have you ever thought about the ministry?" she asked. "I can't do that," I said. "I can't make that kind of change." If in that moment she opened a door, then I tried to slam it shut. But her question stayed with me.
Some time later, I was sitting in church. The reading was Marge Piercy's poem "To Be of Use," which was our responsive reading today:
The work of the world is common as mud.My wife Tracey leaned over and whispered in my ear: "Was that written for you, or what?" Both Tracey and Marta had recognized in me a longing that I had been reluctant to claim.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing, well done, has a shape that satisfies,
clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil, Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry and a person for work that is real.
A year later, we were on vacation, and I was doing what I often did on vacation--talking about work. Tracey patiently listened to me for several days. Finally she said "It's clear that you are no longer happy doing photography. So what are you going to do about it?" I didn't have an answer. This work was all that I had ever done. How could I change?
Our vacation ended and I went back to work. And I would have kept at it, slogging along, except for Tracey and that pesky question. She continued to ask: "What are you going to do about it?" Because of her persistence and encouragement, I decided to close the business I had started fifteen years before, though I had no idea what I was going to do next.
I share these stories with you because I think they have something to tell us about life and longing. Though our longings may be different, my belief is that we are all, as the hymn says "longing, thirsty souls." I would guess that those of us who have worked long and hard, who have achieved much and, who by all rights, should be happy and satisfied, may have some of the deepest longings. We are often masters as keeping moving, at getting things done, in order to avoid hearing that still, small voice inside. It may be a small voice, but, in my experience, it's a persistent one.
I believe that we are each born to be a unique person, with our own particular gifts. Our life's work is in discovering, or remembering, who that person is. Our work is to become ourselves. There is the story of an old rabbi named Zusya, who said "In the coming world, they will not ask me: 'Why were you not Moses?' They will ask me: 'Why were you not Zusya?'"
By listening to our longings, we find the way home to our true selves. The yearnings we feel are clues, trail markers, and gifts along the way, though at the time they might not seem like it. What may at first seem to be a detour or an interruption might really be a "holy longing," one which leads us into community with others and into the presence of God. But how do we differentiate between the many voices that we hear, the many competing interests in our lives? How do we know what will satisfy and what is empty air?
In our culture, we hear the persistent call of consumerism. Those who would sell us products and services know that we hungry for something. When I worked as a photographer, I sometimes found myself making pretty pictures in order to sell things that I wondered if anyone really needed. My job was to help create a desire. Our conspicuous consumption is proof of the hunger we feel, and of the ways we neglect our longings. Who can doubt that we are both the richest, and the hungriest, nation on earth? Supersized food portions and increasingly bigger cars and houses are all part of what a friend of mine calls "America on steroids."
During her visits to the United States, Mother Teresa said that she saw here a more serious kind of poverty than in India. What she saw was a deep spiritual poverty. Will we ever acknowledge that our spiritual hunger will not be fed with physical goods?
I want to be clear. I'm not saying that the spiritual life means ignoring our desires. Just the opposite--it means listening to them, tasting them, feeling them. It means asking them what they are tying to tell us, where they want to lead us. Religion, which literally means to bind together, to re-join, exists to help us to put the pieces of our lives back together. Prayer, fasting, study, contemplation, pilgrimage and worship are all tools that can help us to reclaim the parts of our selves that have been lost or unnoticed, to hear the voice that calls our name. Religion tells us that the spiritual life is a journey, and that our job is to leave what we know and hit the road. It asks us to trust, in the words of Thomas Merton, "that we will be led by the right road though we may know nothing about it."
After I closed my photography business I had a lot of time to think. I took walks and went fishing. I also sat still a lot. My motto could have been, "Don't just do something, sit there." I began seeing a spiritual director and I developed a prayer practice. I worked on listening for the voice that was calling me away from what I knew and toward a future I knew nothing about. I worried a lot about those changes. Tracey and I struggled over how they would affect our family, and whether my growing religious life might lead me somewhere that she would be unable to go. I feared the future. And still I felt drawn toward something that I couldn't even name. When things seemed tough, my old life didn't look so bad, and I'd say "Remind me of what I was so unhappy about?"
In the middle of this process I heard some words quoted in church one day that again seemed to be aimed right at me: "How do we know that God is with us? We know, because we will be led to places we did not plan to go." Yes--led to places we did not plan to go--that has been my experience. Commuting to divinity school, working last summer as a hospital chaplain, standing before you today--I didn't plan to do these things! I'm still not entirely sure how I got here. But along the way, I have again and again been able to say, with joy, "Yes, this is where I ought to be." My fears seem to have been replaced with gratitude. On this journey, I have found many companions, and I have often felt the presence of God.
So I wonder about your lives and longings. What is stirring in you? Are you being called toward something you thought you'd forgotten or toward mending a broken relationship? Are you being called to give your time to a child or to a good cause, or even to turn away from all that you know and strike off in a new direction?
It's natural to fear our longings, to try and keep them buried. We often cover them over with busy-ness and noise, with things that don't really satisfy. What would happen if we started to see our desires as gifts, as clues to who we are and what we're meant to be?
When any of us make the decision to follow our heart where it leads, we shouldn't think that life will necessarily get easier. As Mary Oliver reminds us, it will be a wild night, and the road will be full of fallen branches and stones. We will learn what we are made of, which of course includes our weaknesses and limitations. But we will also get a glimpse of who we were born to be.
Over the past few years I have been blessed to have loving and supportive guides as I have made my way along this path. They have helped me to name and clarify my longings, have nudged me and encouraged me. This year I hope that I might be able to do the same for some of you. I hope to get to know some of your longings--what you desire for your life, for this community, and for the world. I hope we can talk about these things.
Carl Jung was once asked if he thought there was any hope for peace in our troubled world. He said, "Yes, if enough people do their own work." I am convinced that our own work begins with listening to our deepest desires. As we do so, we will be led to places we did not plan to go, to deeper understandings of our interconnectedness with each other, and into the presence of God.
May we be people who hear our heart's own song, and who have the courage to follow where it leads. May we find there sustenance for our longing, thirsty souls. May we be blessed with companions who comfort and challenge us. And at the end, may we find that the life we lived was our own.
Amen.
Frank Clarkson
