Desire: The Journey We Must Take to Find the Life God Offers
Once upon a time there lived a sea lion who had lost the sea.        He lived in a country known as the barren lands. High on a plateau, far from        any coast, it was a place so dry and dusty that it could only be called a desert. A        kind of coarse grass grew in patches here and there, and a few trees were scattered        across the horizon. But mostly, it was dust. And sometimes wind, which together        make one very thirsty. Of course, it must seem strange to you that such a beautiful        creature should wind up in a desert at all. He was, mind you, a sea lion. But      things like this do happen.How the sea lion came to the barren lands, no one could remember. It all seemed        so very long ago. So long, in fact, it appeared as though he had always been there.        Not that he belonged in such an arid place. How could that be? He was, after all,        a sea lion. But as you know, once you have lived so long in a certain spot, no matter      how odd, you come to think of it as home.CHAPTER ONEOur Heart's Deepest SecretWe are never living, but hoping to live. --PascalIt seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we    are alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good,  and we must hunger for them.--George EliotAnd I still haven't found what I'm looking for. --U2There is a secret set within each of our hearts. It often    goes unnoticed, we rarely can put words to it, and yet    it guides us throughout the days of our lives. This    secret remains hidden for the most part in our deepest selves. It    is the desire for life as it was meant to be. Isn't there a life you    have been searching for all your days? You may not always be    aware of your search, and there are times when you seem to have    abandoned looking altogether. But again and again it returns to    us, this yearning that cries out for the life we prize. It is elusive,    to be sure. It seems to come and go at will. Seasons may pass    until it surfaces again. And though it seems to taunt us, and may    at times cause us great pain, we know when it returns that it is    priceless. For if we could recover this desire, unearth it from    beneath all other distractions, and embrace it as our deepest  treasure, we would discover the secret of our existence.You see, life comes to all of us as a mystery. We all share the    same dilemma--we long for life and we're not sure where to find    it. We wonder if we ever do find it, can we make it last? The    longing for life within us seems incongruent with the life we find    around us. What is available seems at times close to what we    want, but never quite a fit. Our days come to us as a riddle, and    the answers aren't handed out with our birth certificates. We    must journey to find the life we prize. And the guide we have    been given is the desire set deep within, the desire we often  overlook or mistake for something else or even choose to ignore.The greatest human tragedy is to give up the search. Nothing    is of greater importance than the life of our deep heart. To lose    heart is to lose everything. And if we are to bring our hearts    along in our life's journey, we simply must not, we cannot, abandon  this desire. Gerald May writes inThe Awakened Heart,There is a desire within each of us, in the deep center of ourselves      that we call our heart. We were born with it, it is never      completely satisfied, and it never dies. We are often unaware of      it, but it is always awake . . . Our true identity, our reason for    being, is to be found in this desire.The clue as to who we really are and why we are here comes    to us through our heart's desire. But it comes in surprising ways,    and often goes unnoticed or is misunderstood. Once in a while    life comes together for us in a way that feels good and right and    what we've been waiting for. These are the moments in our lives    that we wish could go on forever. They aren't necessarily the  "Kodak moments," weddings and births and great achievements.  More often than not they come in subtler, unexpected ways, as  if to sneak up on us.Think of times in your life that made you wish for all the    world that you had the power to make time stand still. Are they    not moments of love, moments of joy? Simple moments of rest    and quiet when all seems to be well. Something in your heart  says,Finally-it has come. This is what I was made for!WHISPERS OF JOYIt was the final evening of our summer vacation. We had    spent nine wonderful days in the Tetons hiking and swimming,    laughing and playing, enjoying rare and wonderful time together    as a family in a stunningly beautiful place. During our explorations,    we had discovered a quiet pond in the woods, about a    half hour's walk from camp, where wildlife would often come in    the evening. This night, we planned to arrive at dusk and stay    until night fell to see what nature might reveal. The sun was setting    behind us as we arrived, and far off in the east massive thunderheads    were building above the Absarokas, cloud upon cloud,    giant castles in the sky. The fading day was slowly turning them  peach, then pink, then gray.A pair of trumpeter swans were swimming across our little    pond, looking for all the world like something from a fairy tale.    My wife and I sat together with our three boys on a spot of grass    near the water's edge, our backs against a fallen log. Across the    pond lay a meadow, the stage for the evening's drama. As light    began to fade, a bull moose with a massive rack emerged from    the willows directly across the meadow from where we sat. He    spotted us and stopped; we held our breath. Silently, he disappeared    into the trees as mysteriously as he had come. Before we    could be disappointed, a cow moose and her calf appeared from    another part of the meadow, wandering along grazing. We  watched them as night continued to fall.A cool breeze stirred the pines above us. Crickets began their    twilight chorus. The cow lay down in the tall grass, but we could    still see her calf. Sandhill cranes were calling and answering one    another around the marsh with their haunting, primeval cries.    The boys huddled closer to us. A beaver swam by our feet, making    a V through the surface of the pond, faded with the light to    a gunmetal gray. Far off in the distance, lightning was beginning    within those cloud fortresses, flashes of glory. A small herd of elk    came out to graze at the far end of the meadow, just as darkness    was settling in. Finally, as if not to be left out, a lone coyote    began to howl. It was one of the most breathtaking nights I have    ever experienced in the wilderness, a living work of art. As the    Scottish poet George MacDonald knew so well, something is  calling to us in moments like these.Yet hints come to me from the realm unknown;Airs drift across the twilight border land,      Odored with life;. . . whispers to my heart are blownThat fill me with a joy I cannot speak,      Yea, from whose shadow words drop faint and weak.--Diary of an Old SoulI know these years are passing quickly, and the time will come    when our boys will no longer want to vacation with us. They will    find other loves and form other ties, and our lives will never be    the same again. Sitting there with them in the woods, clutching    their flashlights, whispering to each other about each passing    mystery, I would have given anything to stop the clock, turn it    back if only for a few days, let us live it all again. But the seasons    pass with or without our permission, and I knew in my heart we    could not stay. For a moment, we were all caught up in something    bigger and more beautiful than we had ever known, "suspended    above the earth," as Norman MacLean says, "free from all    its laws, like a work of art. And I knew just as surely and just as    clearly, that life is not a work of art, and that the moment could  not last."ECHOES FROM THE PASTSometimes these moments go unrecognized as they unfold,    but their secret comes to us years later in our longing to relive    them. Aren't there times in your life that if you could, you would    love to return to? I grew up in Los Angeles but spent my boyhood    summers in Oregon where both my mother's and my father's parents    lived. There was a beauty and innocence and excitement to    those days. Woods to explore, rivers to fish, grandparents to fuss    over me. My parents were young and in love, and the days were    full of adventures I did not have to create or pay for, but only live    in and enjoy. Rafting and swimming in the Rogue River. Playing    in the park. Huckleberry pie at Becky's along the road to Crater    Lake. We all have places in our past when life, if only for a    moment, seemed to be coming together in the way we knew in  our hearts it was always meant to be.There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,The earth, and every common sight,To me did seemAppareled in celestial light,The glory and the freshness of a dream . . .Heaven lies about us in our infancy;Shades of the prison-house begin to closeUpon the growing boy,But he beholds the light, and whence it flows.He sees it in his joy;      . . .At length the man perceives it die away,And fade into the light of common day.--Ode, Intimations of Immortality from Recollection of ChildhoodWordsworth caught a glimpse of the secret in his childhood,    saw in it hints from the realm...