Another prayer from Leaving Ruin:
And again O God,
We are hungry. We are thirsty. We are famished for what we cannot name. Jesus, you spoke, and gave that longing a name. Make us righteousness, give us righteousness, lead to understand that the hunger is for you, for your food, the will of the Father, the body and the blood of you—the Christ. Bless us in the search, in the digging, planting, and harvesting of lean thought with which to feed our starving, shrinking souls. Make us both food and the fed in these churches, and do not let us merely drift in the knowledge of our need.
In Jesus, Amen
In work with fears and trauma, in particular, naming the issue becomes the first big step to healing. Unclaimed emotional pain cannot be helped. It is baggage left to rot in the psyche until it is named, claimed and exposed.
A new commercial on TV by the Church of Scientology names that longing as a search for truth with the statement that they are in possession of The Truth. There is no question this longing occurs. God woos us with this longing.
Sometimes we experience the longing in the form of a craving that we just can’t seem to fill. We stand in front of the fridge and imagine how each thing there will fill us, yet nothing is sufficient.
Sometimes it is the need to be alone. We sit and think and imagine yet don’t find the insight we seek.
Sometimes this longing sends us into groups of people. We laugh and connect, even intimately, yet there is not fulfillment there.
So, Jesus steps in. He is the name for our longing. He brings, in the Spirit, the courage to face the unnamed pain. Immanuel, God with us, the embodiment of our hope. May his presence fill us up so that we can be the vessel to feed others.
Blessings,
Shiann
