Something to think about | Often we tell ourselves, or we are told, in an effort to quell our desires, to look at all the good we already have. We can be made to feel guilty and ungrateful for desiring what we want. But if we do suppress our desires without being satisfied that God has heard us, then, in effect, we pull back from honesty with God. Often, the result for our relationship with God is polite distance or cool civility. Perhaps God cannot or will not grant what we want, but for the sake of the continued development of the relationship we need to keep letting God know our real desires until we are satisfied or have heard or felt some response. . . .
A woman may, for example, be experiencing a “dark night of the soul” and not like it at all. Her desire may be for it to be removed. She may be helped by the knowledge that others before her have experienced the same thing and have been the better for it, but such knowledge does not have to satisfy her desire to be rid of the dark night. A short circuit in the relationship might occur if she tells herself or is told by her spiritual director to squelch her desire “because the experience is good for you.” What she needs to experience is God’s response, not a theorem of spiritual theology.
William Barry, SJ
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I like the idea of “honesty with God”. Being indifferent does not suppress our preferences. Thank you for those words.
This has been very helpful (hopeful).
Thank you