A Disorder Named Gollum

There are a couple of random thoughts running through my mind. One has caught my attention: "Everything that is inconsistent with love will die." The other thought is something Dallas Willard and others who write on spiritual formation have said that sin is desire run amuck. Eve's original sin is a problem with desire: "…the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom…" Genesis 3:6.

Paul and James of the Bible have written similar statements like James 4:1-3 "What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures." (NIV)

All of us can identify with "desires that battle within you". We are often at war with ourselves struggling to make the right choice or not give in to self destructive behaviors. We have desire for more food, sex, money, or love. We feel unsatisfied and we continue to try and fill ourselves with something. According to Webster, desire means "to long or hope for….." What are you longing or hoping for? What are you hungering for? Are you able to satisfy that hunger? Is it enough for you or do you hunger for more?

I think these two random thoughts are related. Everything that comes of my desires that are not born of love will die. Some would say they must die and I would agree but saying they will die is more hopeful. Just because we believe something should die does not necessarily mean it will die. Our disordered longings and hungers whose appetites are never ending create an all consuming preoccupation with satisfying them so that it chokes the life out of everything else. If you are familiar with the Lord of the Rings you may remember Gollum, a grossly deformed and internally tortured creature who is a graphic example of the death that disordered desire brings. Every thought and action he has is directed toward possessing his "precious" ring. His all consuming desire for the ring produced nothing but murderous impulses and finally his death.

A picture of desire satisfied is seen in Psalm 131:2 "But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me." Mothers know how challenging it can be to wean an infant. Resting comfortably in their mothers embrace without protesting and demanding breastfeeding happens as the mother calms, soothes, and provides for the child's needs in different ways. The infant learns to accept and trust the mother's love quieting and stilling its demands for breast milk. The child can now move on and be satisfied by other nourishment.

This metaphor of satisfied desire happens in the context of a loving embrace. The mother's sensitive and attentive responsiveness to her baby is what makes the transition to solid food possible. This transition is a transition of desire. We think we need one thing but love points the way to what we really need. Love teaches us to reorder our desire to that which gives life and away from that which brings death.

Frodo, the ring bearer in the Lord of the Rings understood Gollum's battle with desire. He too struggled with the desire of the ring's power. He responded to Gollum with compassion where others turned away in revulsion. Gollum initially responded to Frodo's mercy and kindness but he was unable to make the transition and rejected love's embrace. His battle within was won by the compulsive desire to possess.

It has been said that Eve was seduced by Satan into believing that God was not truthful with her about dying if she ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. She stopped trusting God and decided for herself what is good to desire. Her desires, her hungers and longings were no longer guided in the loving embrace of her Creator. She was on her own, furtively grasping for nourishment that would never fully satisfy.

Are your desires guided by love's embrace?

Face of Love

It matters how well you have been loved. It also matters how well you love. I listened to a sermon recently that quoted John Eldridge from the Sacred Romance. He wrote something to the effect that it is a rare person who has been unconditionally loved, or "loved for who she is…" The implication is that we are often loved for who someone else wants us to be and that this is a primary source of our sense that something is wrong with us. We sense that we are not accepted so there must be something wrong with us; otherwise the important people in our life would not want us to be something other than who we are. Even writing this makes me feel confused!

It is often stated that a primal or basic human fear is the fear of abandonment, the fear of rejection and isolation, a fear of being left alone. If you saw the movie Castaway with Tom Hanks you have a sense of what isolation does to someone and the extreme measures it takes to survive living only within your own thoughts. How often do we need someone to talk to simply to help us get out of our own thoughts? Tom Hank's character Chuck Noland ended up creating a relationship with "Wilson", a soccer ball, in order to survive. He had to have a conversation with "someone." It is a commonly held understanding that we are hard wired for connection to one another. It is how we are designed.

This should be obvious to all of us how important we are to one another. But like the air we breathe we take it for granted; until something goes wrong and we can no longer breathe in the air we need. If you have ever experienced even a hint of suffocating you know the panicked helplessness. The same is true for the emotional air we breathe. How good is the air of your important relationships? How do you love those most important to you and how do they love you? What kind of emotional climate do you live in? Are you confident that you will get what you need or are you afraid (even unconsciously) that they really are not there for you. Or maybe you just deny that you need anyone.

One of the "thoughts" that kept Chuck Noland going in his drive to survive was the remembering of his relationship with his wife to be Kelly. The memory of the love they had and the hope of loving her in the future helped keep Chuck alive and more importantly motivated to get home. He had what is called "emotional resiliency", the capacity to soothe oneself in the face of disconnection. Those who have been loved well have a basic sense of security that their needs will be met, if not now, soon, if not soon, later. They have a living hope that love is real and present for them. Is love real for you? Are you emotionally resilient? Do you believe that even in its felt absence love exists? And what form does love take? What kind of face does love have for you?

These are profoundly important questions that we all need to answer. Questions about love are spiritual questions and all spiritual questions are ultimately questions about what it is to be human. We are the presence of love that makes love real and we are most human, most truly our self, when we believe in and live in love. We are the form that love takes. We are the face of love to one another. What kind of face do you make?

 

 

Waiting on Love

One of the most poignant and powerful illustrations of the rhythm of significant relationships is the stages of separation that John Bowlby observed in young children experiencing separation from parents. While they are more obvious in children who generally have little difficulty expressing their emotional and physical reactions to things they don't like, the same stages are evident in older children and adults. When people we love do things that threaten us we express our displeasure (protest), if the threatening behavior continues, we become sad and experience a sense of loss (despair), and finally if the sense of separation (you are not there for me) continues long enough we emotionally disconnect (detach) in order to protect ourselves from further emotional pain. We conclude that it is better to be alone than to be rejected.

This rhythm of attachment tells us a great deal about who we are. It is a running commentary of how well we love. Do we listen, hear and respond to the protests of our loved ones? Are we sensitive to their displeasure and their pain? Do we adjust our behavior to reassure them or do we just keep on doing our thing? How well do we know what they need and what is important to them or is it just what is important or significant to us that matters? And perhaps most importantly, are we able to suffer through their insensitivity and even rejection of us while still being open to receive them?

An important quality of how well we love may be seen in our capacity to suffer. Growing in love, becoming more loving, is growing in our willingness to give of ourselves. Many pastors and teachers of religious faith frequently talk about this. Most often, it is expressed in behavioral terms of serving by doing more for someone else and doing less for you. So they focus on our behavior, what we do. Do we go on a mission trip or a golf trip? Do we perform a service project for somebody else or focus on our own projects? Unless we look in our hearts and examine our motives for giving of ourselves we might not really be growing in loving others.

I think we need to consider what suffering consists of to help us know what love is. What does it look like to suffer and what does suffering do in us? How does our capacity to suffer for another develop? What affects it? Who are the most loving people you know? Reflect on what they are like. How do you feel around them? What is it about them that tell you they love? Is it what they do or who they are? Do you know about their life or just their behavior? I would suggest that you know someone loves not just by how they behave but by experiencing a presence that welcomes and invites connection.

Henri Nouwen says we are to become like the father of the prodigal son (a metaphor of God's love) who was shaped by waiting for his sons to deal with their stuff. Nouwen says: "A large part of the father's life has been waiting. He could not force his younger son to come home or his older son to let go of his resentments. Only they themselves could take the initiative to return. During these long years of waiting the father cried many tears and died many deaths. He was emptied out by suffering. But that emptiness had created a place of welcome for his sons when the time of their return came. We are called to become like that father."

I love this statement "emptied out by suffering" that creates "a place of welcome", a place of love and joyful connection. Suffering creates a space in us to love each other, and it involves the helplessness of waiting.

The next time your relationship is threatened, and you notice the rhythm of attachment that tells your loved one you're feeling threatened, consider working on learning how to wait and suffer in order to create a space of connection. You will feel the distress of separation but resist expecting a change in their behavior. Empty yourself by letting go of your demands. Create a safe space for them to come home.