Bar Hunger

I have been feeling a nagging hunger for quite a spell. It has nothing to do with calories. I am well fed.

Without disparaging the worthwhile campaign of Snickers to provide food for the hungry in body, I think soul hunger is more endemic and epidemic in our land.

I can only speak for myself entirely, yet there is a disconnect in my spiritual life that seems to be a common and nearly universal malady here in the U.S.. I know the right answers but somehow that hardly seems satisfying. My head is full of theology, my heart is famished for the Spirit. I am hardly alone.

I continue to work on my book on the college transition and one of the recurring questions I have when writing is whether my words are consistent with the way I am living. Does my rhetoric paint that life needs to be lived a certain way--with the dimensions of passion, purpose, and love--but is this illustration just a shallow illusion? My canvas only looks like it has depth.

This question is actual more than a gnawing hunger, it is more a pervasive haunting. The mirror of the book mocks me to answer the query.

Since Montana is the background for the book, I have delved into Native American history and wisdom to provide some color to the text. It is perhaps far too easy to characterize Native American culture as primitive as it existed before the Colonists settled on the eastern seaboard and worked westward. That was clearly the predominant perspective of white European and American Christian culture then and even now. But in seeing how bad we have screwed everything up, some historical humility is in order.

I have found this quote to be deeply nourishing:

"My friends, how desperately do we need to be loved and to love. When Christ said that man does not live by bread alone, he spoke of hunger. This hunger was not the hunger of the body. It was not the hunger for bread. He spoke of hunger that begins deep down in the very depths of our being. He spoke of a need as vital as breath. He spoke of our hunger for love.

Love is something you and I must have. We must have it because our spirit feeds upon it. We must have it because without it we become weak and faint. Without love our self-esteem weakens. Without it our courage fails. Without love we can no longer look out confidently at the world. We turn inward and begin to feed upon our own personalities, and little by little we destroy ourselves.

With it we are creative. With it we march tirelessly. With it, and with it alone, we are able to sacrifice for others."

Chief Dan George

Let the Spirit of God's love blow on this spiritual barren land.