THE LONGING FOR “MORE THAN”

What my embodied soul was longing for was the transcendent. The transcendent refers to that which goes beyond or rises above the things of the material realm, the physical world. What our souls long for is the spiritual. Most people know this about themselves. Quite often when I am traveling on an airplane and someone asks me what I do, when I tell them I teach in the area of spirituality, I almost always hear something like, “That’s great. I am a spiritual person.” I will also often hear, “But I am not very religious.” Oprah Winfrey hosts a popular show and podcast called Super Soul Sunday, which is designed to help viewers “awaken to their best selves and discover a deeper connection to the world around them” by exploring themes and issues including happiness, personal fulfillment, spirituality, and conscious living.

Once in a while I meet someone who is happy to tell me that they do not believe in a spiritual realm. Only about 4 percent of the population consider themselves atheists, while 16 percent of the world’s population describe themselves as having “no religious affiliation.” If I get a chance to hear someone’s story it often involves pain or hurt with religion or religious people. Still, the hunger for transcendence is a deeply embedded dimension of our embodied souls that will not go away. But many have been misled to believe that the deep longing for spiritual connection can be found solely in the things of this world.

FALSE NARRATIVE: PEOPLE AND THINGS
CAN FULFILL YOUR LONGING

The most common way the transcendent longing is expressed is the search for a soulmate—a deep, sexual, romantic connection with someone. There is a sense that we cannot be fulfilled without it. And many people are genuinely puzzled by the men and women who choose a life of celibacy.

The second most common way to fill the spiritual hunger is through money and material possessions. Money is a form of power—a ten-dollar bill is only a piece of paper with ink and is essentially worthless. But try ripping one in half in front of someone and watch them look at you in horror. This is because we falsely endow it with a power that is non-physical. The more money, the more non-physical power.

The third most common way we seek a spiritual connection is through the validation we receive from other people. When we receive affirmation, we feel a different kind of emotional jolt, a sense that we are known and accepted. A soulmate, material possessions, and validation from others address a spiritual need inside of us, albeit imperfectly. We may be—and likely are—completely unaware of the spiritual dimension of this longing.

We may even deny that these things fill a spiritual need or that we have a spiritual need at all. The denial can be maintained by repressing the spiritual side of the longing, but the longing itself will never go away. It will just seek another outlet. We will take some aspect of our lives and make it ultimate: our jobs, our achievements, our goals, and our bodies become ways to meet a spiritual need. The person who works eighty hours a week or the person who works out at the gym eight hours a day is actually on a spiritual quest.

Money, sex, and power have been the common substitutes for spirituality for thousands of years. Pornography, alcohol, and drugs are also shortcuts to the transcendent that, if we cannot have the real thing, will serve as a substitute. Alcohol is even called a “spirit,” which is why Carl Jung once wrote, “Many people, lacking spirit, take to drink. They fill themselves with alcohol.” People who are surfing for porn are, as my friend Michael J. Cusick has written, actually “surfing for God.”

What we are really seeking is a connection with our Maker. This is because our Maker has created us with this longing—because our Maker longs to be connected with us. But the divine connection requires humility and trust, authenticity and vulnerability, and the pride within us rebels. If I make my career my god, I still maintain control. If I make my body an idol, I get to worship myself. If material success is my ultimate aim, then I get to possess my possessions: “Keep your hands off my things.” The narrative that we can find what we are looking for through money, sex, power, and substances is an illusion, but one that is deeply woven into the fabric of this world.

Mass media, popular culture, literature, and even our educational system run on this narrative. Every product in every commercial is selling an answer to our spiritual longing, even if it is in the form of whiter teeth. Social media interaction is also a quest for spiritual connection. I once had a student tell me that he wished someone would create a virus that would “kill Facebook.” I asked him why. He said, “When I go on Facebook, I end up feeling less worthy and more lonely.”

Something deeper than seeing what our friends had for dinner is going on here. The educational system, of which I am a part, is also built on the narrative that “you should go to school so you can get a job so you can find a soulmate and buy nice things.”

There is nothing wrong with education, or Facebook, or having a career, or going to the gym. And there is nothing wrong with wanting to find a soulmate. I have been very happily married to my soulmate for over thirty years, and I thank God for her. What I am trying to expose is a hidden narrative that within these aspects of human life we can find the answer to our transcendent longing. I am trying to show that the validation we crave cannot be found in how we look, what we have, and what we can do. Good looks, money, and talent are the currency by which we measure people’s worth and life’s meaning, but we are spiritual beings. And the culture we live in will tell us that we are loved if we have the right jeans, and rejected if we don’t.

It is a competitive illusion. I don’t just find fulfillment in having money; I want to have more money than other people. I don’t just want a meaningful career; I want one that others esteem. I don’t just want to be attractive; I want to be more attractive than others. Because the illusion is competitive, it also leads to bigotry and racism and classism. We do not see each other as spiritual, sacred beings, but as better or worse, richer or poorer, more or less educated. We have jobs, but we are not our jobs; we have possessions, but we are not our possessions—all these things are fleeting, temporary. In contrast, we are eternal, spiritual beings, embodied souls with a longing for something deeper than material things that rot and rust and can be stolen.

The false narrative is so deeply embedded that it takes a transcendence crisis to break us free from this illusion. A transcendence crisis occurs when unexpected events cause us to reflect on our lives. Perhaps a friend of ours dies, or our marriage falls apart, or we lose our job. These can be formative events. In my case, it was not a tragic event, but a sense of emptiness that created my transcendence crisis—even though I had no idea at the time what was happening. The common denominator of all transcendence crises is a deep longing for life to be meaningful, to have a sense of purpose, to feel as if we are a part of something profound, and it takes a crisis to wake us up.

TRUE NARRATIVE: ONLY GOD CAN SATISFY
OUR LONGINGS

The longing for fulfillment is rarely debated; we all have that longing. The question is: Where will we find satisfaction? The deeply embedded false narrative, that we can find it through a soulmate, material possessions, or popularity and success, has a .000 batting average. No one has ever claimed they satisfied their transcendent longing through these means. In contrast, the longing for “more than” can be fulfilled in a relationship with God.

This is not to say that all religious people find the transcendent longing they are looking for. In fact, some religious practices actually prevent a deep, intimate connection with our Maker. The word religion comes from the Latin religio, which a means “to connect.” At their best, religious practices are a means of connection to a higher power. But God is a consuming fire. Interaction with the Trinity will involve surrender and purification. As George MacDonald wrote, “Love loves unto purity.” To connect with the Trinity is to go into a secret place and lock the door: “Go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret” (Matthew 6:6). But, as Jesus warned, some people simply want to be seen, to be thought of as pious, and their practices are more for show than for intimacy with God.

Still, the spirit within us, that part of our souls that is able to experience God, will persist in its search. It will never be satisfied with going through the motions. The void is too vast to be filled with anything other than God. And whereas God created this void in all of us, he did so in order to fill it completely and to satisfy our deepest longings with the perfect love of the Trinity. What we are searching for cannot be measured or fully quantified by our senses or by the sciences. But we all know it when we find it, even if only for a moment. Because the longing itself is a power, a dynamic, a gifted disrupter that will shake us out of our complacency and drive us deeper into the heart of God.

THE SPIRITUAL DIMENSION

This spiritual longing is a dimension of our souls—we are born with it. It is a preformed and undeniable dimension of our lives. It is what makes us distinctly human.

In all creation we alone are made in God’s image, and relationship with God is the only thing that will meet this profound longing. This longing is the driving force of human life that propels us to reach higher and try harder. It is the enduring source of all great art, and the driving force of space exploration. The transcendent dimension is the motivating power behind every sonnet, and what makes us tingle at a beautiful sunset or elegant sonata. It is what brings us to our feet at the sight of a great feat: Michael Jordan scoring fifty points (I actually saw this once). Humans are longing for the “more than.” Powerful hints of it can be found in a great film, or a piece of music, or a walk in the woods. We feel, for a moment, that there is something larger happening than just what we can see and touch.

The transcendent longing, the longing for the more than, is ultimately a longing for God. The hunger is so vast that it can only be met by something limitless. The transcendent yearning built into our souls is a desire for God. The Scriptures give voice to this longing:

The soul’s desire, the soul’s yearning, is for the living God.

Saint Augustine, writing in the fourth century, described the transcendent dimension this way: “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” God designed us with a deep longing that manifests itself in restlessness. And the restlessness will persist until we find that inner connection with God—the God who has been pursuing us through our longing.

The seventeenth-century mathematician, scientist, and philosopher Blaise Pascal also described the inner longing:

The “infinite abyss” cannot be filled by any of the things we think will fill that void. It cannot be fulfilled by anything other than “God himself.”

The transcendent dimension is a built-in, factory-included potency that is always present, even if it is not acknowledged. It is the deepest part within our embodied souls, and the least visible. It is directing our lives even if we are unaware. As Dallas Willard has written, “‘Spiritual’ is not just something we ought to be. It is something we are and cannot escape.” It is influencing us even if we have not named it; it is unfolding within us every day; it sparks our greatest dreams, and fuels our greatest accomplishments. It is the source of the deep, inward intuitions that guide us.

Our spirits have a built-in divine receptivity. It is the infinite abyss Pascal described. It is the reason the Spirit can bear witness with our spirit: “You have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Romans 8:15-16). For me, the longing I felt, which could not be met by positive thinking or chanting a mantra, was finally met when I encountered Jesus on the pages of the Gospels. The Holy Spirit filled the Christ-form of my soul. My embodied soul found its rest in Jesus.

Jesus said, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:24). God is spirit, and you and I have a spirit; it is how we connect to God. And it is how we connect to goodness, nobility, truth, and beauty. Humans cultivate those things because we are human, because we are unceasing spiritual beings. And Jesus was human and spiritual, as we are.

I studied how Jesus practiced the spiritual disciplines, searching the Gospels for clues about how he connected to God through reading the Scriptures (he clearly knew them), about worship (he went to the synagogue), and about his prayer life. What struck me the most was Jesus’ private prayer practice and how frequently we are told that he prayed. In Luke’s Gospel alone we are told that Jesus would “withdraw to deserted places and pray” (Luke 5:16). Luke records twelve instances of this. Why would Luke tell us this so many times? I think because it was a central part of his life—Jesus entered solitude in order to engage with the Father.

And Jesus was clearly aware of the false narrative that we can find the answer to our longing in the things of this world. He told a rich young ruler to give away his possessions, not because possessions are bad, but because the young man was possessed by his possessions and would never find what he was looking for in them. Jesus stood up to the devil in the desert, who tried to tempt him with power and earthly wealth and validation. He said no; he said no for us and on our behalf. And now we can do the same. We can say no to the treasures of earth so we can say yes to the treasures of heaven. God can and does bless us with various earthly treasures, but seeking them as ends in themselves will leave us empty and unfulfilled. In contrast, viewing them as means to the end of loving and glorifying God will bring us joy—seeking the treasures of heaven will satisfy our souls.

TRANSCENDENT MIND, WILL, MEMORY

How does the transcendent dimension work in our everyday lives? We have been given a mind that is capable of receiving the directives of the transcendent dimension. Paul encourages the Colossians to set their minds on things above (Colossians 3:2), and he encourages the Philippians to think about “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, [anything of] excellence and . . . worthy of praise” (Philippians 4:8).

Our minds are designed to take in the things of God. This is why Paul said to set our minds on the Spirit—our minds are built to receive transcendent directives. Think about a time you listened to a sermon and caught an insight, or read the Bible and a word or phrase came alive and started a chain reaction of new ideas about God and the kingdom of God. Our minds are the primary place God interacts with us. We have the ability to apprehend and appraise divine things. Jesus had this ability as well: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,” Paul writes (Philippians 2:5, italics added).

We also have a transcendent will. Our will is our capacity to choose, to decide, and to act. We are endowed with the ability to make things happen. So when we apprehend a divine directive, such as “trust in the Lord,” we begin to trust God as seen in our actions, and this is done by our will. Our will decides, and by our will we persevere. We need the consent of our mind and our will to accomplish great things for God.

God has also endowed us with the ability to remember. Saint Augustine wrote extensively about the divine gift of memory. We use our memory all of the time. As I write, I am remembering the meaning of every word I type. I learned what “memory” means, and I remembered it. The transcendent dimension of our memory involves our ability to imagine. We have the ability to conceive of things because of our memories. When we planted a new church twenty-five years ago, my colleague Jeff Gannon and I imagined what this new church could be like on the basis of other churches we remembered.

We did not build the church out of nothing. In our memory we knew what churches are supposed to look like, and with our imagination we dreamed of what a new one might be. And we anticipated with great enthusiasm what this church might be. Now, looking back over twenty-five years of life together, we can see how we used our minds and will and memory and imagination to do something great for God. Lives have been changed over this span of time: people have heard the good news, lived in fellowship with one another, and partaken of the sacraments that bind us together thousands of times. God gave us not only a transcendent longing, but a transcendent mind, will, and memory to make it a reality.

AWAKENING THE TRANSCENDENT

The first awakening of our transcendent dimension comes in infancy. When we look into the smiling gaze of our mother, father, or caregiver, the transcendent dimension is awakened. We realize we are a person, an “I,” and that there is another person, a “Thou,” who has connected with us. A precious smile occurs when an infant sees the smile of another smiling back at them—into their eyes, which are the window to our soul—that affirming gaze awakens the transcendent.

When a family pauses for prayer before a meal, a child begins to recognize the sacred aspect of reality. Transcendent inspirations are awakened by our environment: the sight of our mother lighting a candle, or a minister presiding over a worship service, or someone speaking about their experiences of God are ways the transcendent is awakened. In my own family there were moments the transcendent was awakened in me. When we took family trips in our car, my mother and father would often sing, and one song that really stood out to me was “Go Down, Moses.” My dad singing “Let my people go,” with his deep baritone voice, sent a quiver in my body.

Transcendent formation will depend on the quality of the spiritual life a child is exposed to. My mother had a deep longing for God that was real and stayed with me even when I was far from God, when I wanted nothing to do with church. She witnessed wordlessly to a deeper life that would one day become central to me. She never forced her faith on me. There was a silent appeal, a call I could not escape. I am grateful my own children have grown up as believers, and I hold out hope with friends whose children have left the faith that they will return. As the often quoted verse tells us: “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6 KJV).

My friend John likes to say that every Christian needs a “mountaintop experience” at least once a year. By mountaintop he means those times of spiritual elation, or strengthening—those moments, often on retreat or at a Christian event, when God seems incredibly near. My friend Mimi speaks often of those “thin places,” as the Celtic Christians called them, where it seems as if the veil between heaven and earth is razor thin. I think there is a lot of truth to this. We are made for transcendence, and summit experiences provide a great deal of strength.

For many years I have hosted the Apprentice Gathering, a three-day retreat featuring great speakers and workshops all dealing with Christian spiritual formation. Every year something powerful happens, something that we have no control over and cannot compel to happen. At some point, the room we are in begins to feel like it glows with the presence and power of God. A kind of glory enters into our midst and makes the place and the people within it feel holy. When transcendent, God-seeking people gather together to experience God’s transcendence, God shows up in powerful ways.

I think this happens also because we plan and prepare for it. Not just those of us who organize it, but the people who come. They have spent time planning to meet God. They have chosen to detach themselves from their ordinary, busy, distracted lives for a time in order to focus on their transcendent dimension. And in that context, something powerful happens. More often than not, people come home having been deeply spoken to by God. I used to joke that “God must only speak in the woods,” because God is so vocal on retreats in the woods. Of course, it is not the woods that make it happen; it is because the people who go to the woods have set aside a time to slow down, be quiet, and be present.

The challenge for us is what to do when we come back from a summit experience. We enter back into the same routines, the same overbooked, loud, busy lives we normally live, and suddenly it can seem as if God went deaf. Our capacity to connect has not changed; the light of our transcendent dimension has not dimmed—our focus has shifted. The web of everydayness has taken over. The challenge is to remain open to the transcendent in our ordinary lives.

NURTURING THE TRANSCENDENT

We cannot always live on retreat. We cannot always stay at the summit. But we can discover the infinite in the finite; we can learn how “to see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wildflower,” as William Blake wrote. The transcendent dimension of our embodied soul is looking for inspiration and aspiration all of the time, but most of the time we neglect it. We have to train ourselves to see it.

Fr. Adrian van Kaam was a young priest in the Netherlands during the Nazi occupation. He lived through the Dutch Famine, also known as the “Hunger Winter” of 1944–1945. He noticed that in extreme deprivation, people could still connect to the transcendent. He found that the people who during times of suffering could still see divine beauty, could still see the glory of the present moment, and could attend to the epiphanies all around them, fared much better than those who could not.

He built his entire understanding of the soul during this fertile period. He came up with a phrase I love, “awe-filled attentive abiding.” For Fr. Van Kaam, this meant living with “appreciative abandonment.” Think about a small child watching a butterfly for the first time. They are filled with excitement and awe; the butterfly creates a sense of wonder and joy.

But as we grow older, we lose the excitement, the awe, the wonder, and the joy in such moments. Instead of appreciative abandonment, we train ourselves to think depreciatively. We become blind to the glory and instead focus on the negative. We see what is wrong, not what is right, about people and circumstances. All the while, we are postponing joy.

Transcendent presence in daily life does not mean we ignore our problems. It does not mean simply thinking positively. Nor is it a trancelike state of existence. Instead, it means lifting every problem, every person, every situation into the light of our loving God’s ultimate meaning. It is not trying to eliminate our problems, but to elevate them. We see daily life, from laundry to committee meetings to cooking dinner, with an awareness that God longs to connect with us through all of it. Nurturing the transcendent means keeping our eyes and ears open to the wonder of each moment.

One Sunday afternoon my family and friends and I were out on our deck, enjoying the sun, playing a board game, listening to music, and laughing. I paused for a moment and tried to soak it all in. The wonder of these marvelous human beings suddenly hit me. I did not look at them as anything other than epiphanies of grace. Our new puppy, Wesley, began playing with our older dog, Winston. They rolled around in the grass and it made me smile till my face hurt. Then, without warning, our neighbor’s barbershop quartet started rehearsing in their backyard. The sound of the human voices and the harmony of the bass, the tenors, and the baritone elevated my embodied soul. When it ended, our whole neighborhood erupted in applause.

Van Kaam writes, “Many people reach only incidentally a transcendent view of life. . . . Few persons seem to live a life that allows transcendence to blossom forth and to permeate their formation as such.” I want transcendence to blossom in my life as much as possible. Each day we can seize the Spirit because God loves to take our hand in every moment—we can nurture and nourish the good and beautiful transcendent dimension of our lives, and linger in awe at these moments of life until they blossom forth.

I love the poem “For Longing” by John O’Donohue. It speaks of how God longs for each of us and how that longing brought us into being. And it speaks of how our longing for God is but a reflection of God’s longing for us. May this benediction, and the truth behind it, quicken your soul with wonder: