Entwined Desires

I drove across New York State this past weekend to a conference outside of Rochester. Throughout the nearly six hour drive, I kept pressing the search button on my radio, surfing for local stations.

Friday morning’s results didn’t surprise me. With every search, I found a handful of morning shows, featuring rousing banter whose thinly veiled sexual innuendo framed rock songs sporting the same. The vibe was so similar from one station to the other. Some catchy title—The Point, The Rock, The Wall, The River; Star and Buzz—punctuated with a bright signature line, promised more music all the time. Between songs that told of of hearts meeting, beating, bleeding, and bleating; swooning croons, jealous anger, and pent up desire, the hosts—one woman and several men—laughed outrageously at their own off-color wit.

So too with every search I found a couple of Christian shows, featuring sermons that expounded on the importance of right relationship with God. Here male preachers spoke in rhythmic cadences, citing biblical authority as proof of the transforming power of God in our lives.

I remarked on the juxtaposition. Once. Then again. And again. Clear across the state, I found it, sex and spirit, alongside one another, parting the waves between them.

What do we desire?

On the way home, on Sunday afternoon, I tried my experiment again with similar results. This time, however, pop songs replaced the raunchy morning shows, and pop songs stood in for the sermons. Then it got interesting. Station to station, I heard the same yearning hearts—similar voices, instruments, phrasing, and emotional arcs. Even the titles seemed interchangeable.

Was “You Make Me Sing” offering praise to God or compliments to a handy partner? Was “Empty Me” a believer’s call for God to work wonders or a rapster’s call to an appealing chick?
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Our desires are entwined. Desire for physical intimacy. Desire for spiritual affirmation. As a scholar of religion, it shouldn’t surprise me. History is chock full of love songs to divine powers, and lovers worshipping their partners. Still, the degree of interpenetration in our culture is distinct. The patterns of sensation and response are the same, running the gamut from delight, anticipation, patience, and excitement, to longing, frustration, irritation, and anger. We want that feeling that fills us up and bubbles over in bliss. But what we want is not forthcoming as easily as we would prefer. We want more.
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More what? Desire for spirit? What do we desire when we desire “spirit”?

I use the word “spirit” because its meaning is deliciously multiple. It can refer to an entity like a god or goddess but also to an energy that moves inside us, inspiring us. There can be team spirit, school spirit, good spirits, raised spirits, and the spirit of Christmas, as well as Holy Spirit.

The span is intentional, for whether we see it as entity or energy, the effect on us is the same. The “spirit” we desire provides us with a sense of vitality, direction, and belonging, that together let us know that our lives our worthwhile. We know that who we are has value, for someone or something. Without such spirit, humans cannot live.

As with our desire for nourishment and physical intimacy, there is evidence too in contemporary culture that large proportions of people are not finding what they desire. The signature symptom is depression. A depressed person suffers from feeling no vitality, no sense of direction, and no connection to meaningful others. It is as if life force has leaked out, leaving nothing to fuel hope or action. What once seemed possible folds in and collapses upon you, a weight you cannot move.

Most people experience some degree of depression at some point in their lives. The proximate causes may range from traumatic loss, relentless stress, overwhelming anxiety, persistent loneliness or a lack of sleep, nutrients, or love. The symptoms can range from mild malaise to debilitating paralysis, and may clear up shortly or endure for years.

Our responses run the gamut as well. And here the comparison with our desires for food and sex is illuminating. For, as in these other realms, what we see dominating our cultural sensibility is a tendency to suspect our desires for more, and mobilize a mind-over-body sense of ourselves as our first and best line of defense. We want our discomfort to end, of course, and so we look to what we can acquire that will make the sensation quickly and completely disappear. We look for ways to distract, numb, or dazzle ourselves; we drug ourselves with substances ranging from sugar and caffeine to pornography and prozac. We look outside ourselves for the one true belief that will save us.

There is another way.
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In the next two months, we will be exploring this desire for spirit—how it manifests, how we respond, how it entwines with our desires for nourishment and intimacy. We will expose the mind-over-body logic that continues to loom large in how we sense and respond to this desire, and we will explore what a difference a shift to a perspective of bodily becoming makes.

As we shall see, when we know for ourselves that “I am the movement that is making me,” we have what we need to discern the wisdom in our desire for spirit. We can find in our feelings of depression, alienation, and despair a wisdom guiding us to create the relationships that will support us in unfolding what we have to give.

Reflection:
Think about it. What is it that gives you a sense of vitality?
When in a given day, week, or month, are you most likely to feel like your life matters?
With what communities or contexts or universes or worlds do you feel most connected?
How often do these things hover in your consciousness, at the horizons, below the surface, or in the center, enabling you to go on?