Ask For What You Want: Disrupting desire’s bad reputation
“Ignatius (of Loyola) urges us to pray explicitly for what we want. He believed that God places these great desires in our hearts.” (Jim Manney) Another way to say this might be, my deep-most desire is not other than God’s desire for me.
Redeeming Desire
Desire wiggles my toes
dancing fur feathered slippers
Desire tilts my head
peeking beyond frosty front door
Desire quells clangy head in my heart
insisting I name what I want
Desire nudges my neonate seedling
breeching time’s crusty routine
Once upon a long ago
desire was hunger, greed
thirst, need,
lust, wish
Today my appetite fishes for devotion
to Ultimate Reality I call God
wiggling my toes
tilting my head
birthing something more
from my crusty routine
PS 4 hours after publishing the above, while no longer looking to answer the question, “What do you want?” a succinct summary occurs to me.
I want to be more fully alive.
Jim Manney, SJ quote above is found in An Ignatian Book of Days by Jim Manney, a series of daily reflections from the Spiritual Wisdom of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Throughout the book we hear the voices of St. Ignatius as well as many great thinkers and writers, long gone and present day, each uniquely revealing the way of finding God in all things. And that is my intention; to find God/Divine Presence/Ultimate Reality in whatever presents itself to me each day in 2024.
Each day I will read, reflect and write on the selection, hoping to articulate the ways in which I come to know God/Divine Presence/Ultimate Reality via personal experience, impelled by the leading of my inner life.
INVITATION
Would you like to join me? The book is accessible on Amazon. Let me know in the comments to this post and sign up to get an email whenever I post. I would love to read your reflections too, public or private messages welcome!
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Learn more about me at
https://www.debraasis.org
All words are generated by grace and the grit of a real human being,
Debra Asis
