The Place Where Reasons Fail

I have come to realize that the most important questions we can ask ourselves, such as where we are going, what gives us joy, and how best can we give our lives to others cannot be answered by our minds alone.  There are so many good ways to live a life, so much good that can be done by so many different things.  Is it better for me to spend my time helping the sick or helping the homeless?  Should I be a monk or be a university administrator?  Should I marry Susie or should I marry Jenny?

If reason alone could tell us what to do, then everyone would probably end up doing the same thing.  At least, that is, if everyone was acting rationally.  But I know of no way to weigh in a scale one good against another.  How can you weigh the good of being a doctor against that of being an engineer?  How can you weigh creating a new life against saving one? 

The beauty is that each person is different, and is each called to bring forth a different kind of good into the world.

Reason is nice.  It can help us figure out a lot of things.  It works pretty well for telling right from wrong and a good idea from a stupid idea.  But I don't think it can answer those deep questions about the primary way in which we are to live our lives.  I think that's because in the Christian life, all the reasons come down to one reason.  The one reason to do anything is because one loves God above anything else.  But this one reason leads to many different responses.  Indeed, it leads to infinitely many.  No two saints are the same.  So to answer the question of the particulars to which this love is leading us, we have to go to that place where reasons fail.  We have to find the deep stirrings of God in our hearts, to find that place where our deepest desires come alive.

This is a scary thing, because it requires trust.  We can have control over reason.  To reason about something enables us to explain it.  Then we can understand the 'why?'  But to trust what we hear in the silence, to trust that to which we are drawn in a deep and inexplicable way requires relinquishing all control.  Desire is unexplainable.  Can you explain to me why you are drawn to particular people?  Really?  Can you explain a beautiful face?  Impossible.  In a way, we cannot possibly understand ourselves.  We just have to listen and follow.  We have to be open, and to follow trustingly.  We have to relinquish all control in answering these fundamental questions about what good we are called to create in the world.  We have to let go.

Transforming Desire

Travelling about the lake (this time running) has been a good source of thoughts lately.  On my run today it struck me how living a good life and living a Christian life are as much about transforming our desires as they are about transforming our behavior.  In paraphrasing William Law, Peter Kreeft once said "If you will look into your own heart in utter honesty, you must admit that there is one and only one reason why you are not even now a saint. You do not wholly want to be."  This, then, is the task.  We must want to be saints.  The most successful people really want to be successful.  This holds true in the spiritual life, as much as in the world of business or the world of athletics.

But how do we begin to transform our desires?  I suppose it starts by living as if we had them.