Cam's Blog
The Hunger that Nourishes
A hunger that nourishes…
Deep at the bottom of the stomach, below anxiety and underneath nausea, there is a deep well of emptiness. We know of it from because of a gnawing hunger we attempt to staunch with any available pleasure or pain. We feel it as a thickening thirst that begs to be slaked. We rarely, if ever, peer into it directly and see it for what it is. Like the eclipsed sun, we cannot look at it directly and see it in its fullness. Instead, we become aware of it several ‘floors’ above, in our loneliness, anxiety and fear.
It is the place, were we to visit it, where we live alone with God—or swim alone with God if you want to use Jungian imagery. It is a deep, vast subterranean (or its psychic equivalent) reservoir or aquifer that flows beneath our daily consciousness and upon which we ride like the the oceans are cradled in the arms of tectonic plates. Most hungers or thirsts require nourishment in order to still but the hunger or thirst derived from this chamber we inhabit with God, actually nourish us by their continued and gnawing presence. To be drawn into it through our hunger to know more, or want more, or seek more is actually life-giving. As we drill down into this mysterious ocean of life beneath the surface, we are fed by insights and revelations and understandings and perspectives we can receive from nowhere else.
But alas, we mostly attempt to fill that dangerous hole underneath our fear. We attempt to drown the thirst with alcohol or drugs, self-medicating what we perceive to be harmful loneliness instead of allowing ourselves to be drawn into it and discover the potential bliss of aloneness. We attempt to fill the hole with business that keeps us distracted from anything that does not feel good. We race away from our hungers in hopes of outrunning them, and when if ever we stop in exhaustion, we start running the minute we can hear the thumping of our own hearts again.
The hunger that nourishes is within us and cannot be satiated. Instead of trying to stuff ourselves full, or drink ourselves drowsy, we do well to slowly lower ourselves down, down, down into the deep well of aloneness where were swim with God alone.
Posted on Jul 26, 2010
