Friends, I am feeling weary today. I wonder about you.
I don’t have a lot of words. I don’t have a lot of energy. I don’t have a lot of knowing. What I seem to have at the moment is a lot of unknowing. Uncertainty. A host of problems circling around, needing to be solved.
And a longing for that release, peace, presence, and nurturing, supportive, loving, alive community that could hold this moment with me. They could hold this uncertainty. They could sit still with me and bring me soup. Offer me an embrace. Play with my children. And assure us that it’s going to be okay.
Through the Substack and all the work I’ve been doing, I have spent so much time articulating and casting a vision of the future, and imagining new ways of living and being in the world. New spaces where we might nurture new church life. A new life where we are invited to be fully ourselves, and where we can receive this nurturance that I long for.
And right now, on the path as I walk it, I’m feeling more deeply where this longing comes from. That it’s a calling, yes. That it’s a vision, yes. But that, on a deep, vulnerable, personal level, it’s really just a need that has yet to be met fully. And so I have to keep working towards it, making room for it, longing for it.
There’s so much freedom in the world right now — freedom to record videos and put them out on the internet, freedom to make new agreements in our relationships, to experiment with the roles that we play, to go our own way. And yet, seemingly simultaneous with that freedom, there’s a loss, it feels like, of connection, of community, of embodied human beings showing up for other embodied human beings in care and connection.
I state that with confidence, trusting that others will hear me and relate. While I also carry a deep insecurity that this sense that I have — of a lack of community and connection — is just me. That everyone else has their communities, everyone else has their supportive networks, and it’s all kind of going swimmingly for most everyone, and I’m the odd one out. That I’ve slipped through the cracks, and because of my quirks or my insecurities or my fault, I’ve been left alone. I’m tempted to believe that more often than I’d like to admit.
But what I also believe, and I have a deep commitment to believe, and that I have experienced, is: at the same time, I’m just here, just like you, just like the trees outside. And that my experience of life is just as valid, just as holy, just as true as all other life that is living right now. And so, whatever is going on in me, whatever I am feeling and experiencing and longing for has value. It’s meant to be here. I am not an abomination or an aberration. I am a conduit of divine life, just like everybody else.
And that, perhaps, it’s actually this longing in me that has the most potential to make room for the divine life to flow more fully in the world than the parts of me that have it together, or that feel confident and strong.
Longing and desire have often been kind of denigrated in the spiritual life, or the spiritual communities. We certainly learn from the Buddha the challenge of longing or desire — the way in which desire can leave us in a loop of always wanting something we don’t have, always grasping. And so we’re taught to release desires. To be non-attached. To be present. And accepting of what is. To go with the flow of life. And there’s wisdom in that. And believe me, I am on that journey.
And when I show up to myself in these moments, when I show up to all of the problems I perceive around me, when I show up to the experience of what it is to be inside and in relationship with the people that I meet — this longing is present. It’s one of the things that I continually return to when I show up in the present moment. And it doesn’t feel like I’m attached to it. It just feels like it’s here. Like it’s part of the truth of this moment.
I wonder what longings you perceive in your environment that persist, right? That don’t go away.
I think we’re missing something when we think of non-attachment as being about letting go of our desires. I wonder if sometimes we confuse letting go of our desires with squashing them or ignoring them. Certainly, when I think of the Buddha laughing, and I think of his big belly, I see someone who allowed the flow of longing to move through him, to eat and to drink and to be merry, and perhaps was able to flow even more fully because he was not attached.
It feels to me like this desire in me, this longing in me, is connected to the flow of life. It’s connected to where I am being called to open up and to make room. And I cannot squash this longing, no matter how hard I try.
So, if you’re listening to this — if you are a part of whatever this longing is calling out for, if you feel connected to this message, to what I’m bringing — thanks for being here. Thanks for sitting with me in this longing. I do believe it is leading me, and us, somewhere.
I’m ready for more connection. For more unity with diversity. For more living, embodied care and relationship. For a new way of being, where all of us are held and nurtured in a way that maybe we’ve never received before.
It’s not here yet — at least not in its manifest fullness. But the seed is here. And I trust it. And it is good. I can feel that it is good.
Alright. Blessings, friends.
