That for which I thirst

For what does your soul thirst?

Frankly, I don't know. This has been one of the problems in my life. I have spent so much time taking care of others or worrying about what others want of me that I have never really been able to answer the question concerning what it is for which I thirst.

I am put in mind of at least three times of genuine desert experience: each time sinking into the depths of loneliness and wondering just what it was that God was asking of me. The most recent was at St Mark's when in the quiet of he night I went into the Church and prostrated myself before the altar. There I literally cried out to God, "What do you want? Give me some sign. Something. Anything."

Yes. I was deeply thirsty then. What eventually emerged was a quiet confidence, "I am enough for you. I am all you need." That seemed to slake that thirst for a while. But that same challenge arises again and again. Maybe I need to begin to realize that the answer will be the same again and again.

Perhaps I am looking for an answer that is right before me. Somehow I think that the solution to my thirst, my hunger, is outside of me-- something that I need "to do." Maybe the answer is already in my grasp-it is simply "to be."

Maybe my penchant for pleasing others has infiltrated my relationship with God, the one whom I can never really "please" by anything I "do" but who is pleased simply by my being and becoming that which God has created me to be.

Maybe, just maybe, my thirst is simply "to be" in the presence of God.

-- read Psalm 63