In the desert of the heart, longing turns out to be its own fulfillment!

"I am going to allure you. I will lead you into the desert, and there I will speak to your heart."

Hosea 2:14

The human heart is very much like a desert, for it is a place of great thirst - a place of endless longing for meaning, for love, for union. In entering the desert of the heart, we allow ourselves to be stripped of all of our most shallow desires - for fame, wealth, possessions, recognition, temporary consolation, as well as our concern over what people may think or have done to us, and our own seeming flaws and shortcomings. In the inner desert, we are left with silence, with solitude, with simplicity, and most of all, with longing itself, which then - without the distraction of these lesser loves - is finally able to blaze into a vibrant and insistent heat. What we discover is that LONGING IS AN ACTUAL PRESENCE which grips and holds us. It has no object - other than US - but becomes an end in itself! For we find that the longing which so grips us is like an invisible hand leading to a transparent arm that has its source in the infinite inner canyon out of which the desert of the heart continually emerges. And this "arm" is connected to a Source we can never reach, no matter how deeply we travel inward, yet whose longing nevertheless grips us in its constant, eternal, magnetic love. Here we find - surprise! - that our desire for union with our Source is in reality a participation in THE SOURCE'S DESIRE FOR UNION WITH US. Thus, desire - in being objectless - suddenly BECOMES ITS OWN FULFILLMENT! And when this realization occurs, we understand that longing is actually a form of receiving. Thus, in the end, desire turns out to be a vibrant life-form sprouting and flourishing in the desert, one where the lack of the water of consolation - through some kind of mysterious inner alchemy - is ITSELF a lush and moisture-filled plant!

Photo: Rabbitbrush growing in sand, Great Sand Dunes National Park, CO, March 28, 2015