...In contemplation from my recent weekend away with some close friends at my favorite place on earth, Brighton...
From Henri Nouwen's fantastic book, The Inner Voice of Love :
Your community needs you, but maybe not as a constant presence. Your community might need you as a presence that offers courage and spiritual food for the journey, a presence that creates the safe ground in which others can grow and develop, a presence that belongs to the matrix of the community. But your community also needs your creative absence. You might need certain things that the community cannot provide. For these you may have to go elsewhere from time to time. This does not mean that you are selfish, abnormal, or unfit for community life. It means that your way of being present to your people necessitates personal nurturing of a special kind.
This is encouraging, as I am in such a different place spiritually and emotionally now than I have been in a long time. I am shifting and my needs are changing and I am finding that my usual sources that help to meet my needs are not able to provide that as securely now. I have this need for touch- to be held and to hold. For affection. I have this deep desire to receive and offer love. Others around me are not with me in that. They are finding peace in their own rhythms of life. My unsettled needs are screaming to be met. Working through this I realize that I can't expect those around me to take up my journey and to walk around in my shoes all the time. I have to step out and change for myself. I have to walk down the path of truth and peace and light to meet God on my own. No one else can do that for me. As I am taking responsibility for myself, I see how very alone I am. When I stop depending entirely on others to meet my needs and stand alone in the midst of brokenness- that is unmet needs trying to be filled in oh so many illegitimate ways- I can only turn one way... To God.
God reassured me that none of the needs I have should be despised, denied, or repressed. I must move beyond my body's superficial desire for love and look toward the genuine need for love. God will come in and replace anxiety with peace. He will send the right people my way to appropriately fill me with affection and He will affirm me in the right ways, I wont need to search for it in others. I can accept the invitiation to his beckoning me to hiddenness in him.
Nouwen writes, "In Jesus, God took on human flesh. The spirit of God overshadowed Mary, and in her all enmity between spirit and body was overcome. Thus God's spirit was united with the human spirit, and the human body became the temple destined to be lifted up into the intimacy of God through the Resurrection. Every human body has been given a new hope, of belonging eternally to the God who created it. Thanks to the Incarnation, you can bring your body home."
This is my desire now. To have unification with my desires as Brandon, and the desires God has for me (that have already been placed inside me). This is a unique exchange that happens only between the Creator and myself.
