On my last night in Amsterdam before I left for the pilgrimage (or rather, the Grenoble vacation followed by the week in Taize followed by the pilgrimage) I had given a concert entitled "Songs of Fear and Desire". I played mostly songs I had written, and I gave way-too-long spoken meditations in between.
The nature of fear and desire really gripped me. Can these forces be distinguished? When are they good? When are they bad? How much do they really "exist" in themselves, and how much are they dependent on each other?
If someone wants something, is it the desire for the thing itself, or is it the fear of having to continue life without it that motivates him? If a man wants to get married, is he driven by the desire for the woman, or by the fear of being left to live his life without her? Can he even tell the difference between the two? People claim they can, but I am skeptical. It feels to me like they haven't faced the question very honestly.
To me, anyway, the answer is not clear. I can't tell if I want something because the desire is in itself a force, or if I want something because I am afraid of missing out on it.
Unless it is one of the forms of desire we call sinful. I can identify those types of desire as being a force in themselves, quite independent of fear. I can identify when I feel lust, or envy, or avarice. This is desire. When I am tempted to lust after a woman, I do not perceive that desire to be really a form of fear. I perceive the desire to be an actual something.
But when I think about my desire for God, I do not perceive that as a something. It seems to be a nothing that is the negative space around my fear.
Ambition, which is generally thought of as desire, seems to be more of a fear; it is the fear of anonymity, the fear of a life without achievement (or, in my case at least, without some recognition for achievement).
Love, on the other hand, I cannot really imagine. It is an elusive concept to me. I think about people I love, and I find that they are few. And then I wonder what it means that I love them, and I find that I don't have a very clear answer to that question. It has gotten even more complex since I have had a look into the whole emotional mess of what is called "co-dependence", that form of narcissism which passes for love in so many real-life relationships as well as romance novels, romantic movies or pop songs. It gets confusing, and even the "real item", the love that the Bible talks about, does not help me out.
When I went on a pilgrimage through Spain in 2007, I repeatedly thought that I could write a book about everything that was happening in and around me. A few weeks after finishing the pilgrimage I started this blog instead. It may be the rough draft of an upcoming book -- who knows -- but it is my surrender to the urge to try to put into words what might better be left cloaked under a vow of silence.
