Dreams and Desires

Benedicamus Domino!

This night I find myself sitting solitary and pondering the dreams and desires we build for ourselves. Whence do these airy castles of gold and silver come to us? Do we construct them brick by brick and tower by tower, or do they somehow exist already and is God, who knows all things He has made, simply point them out to us? Well, as with most things, I believe that it is both. There's a saying in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings which states: "Go not to the elves for advice, for they will say both 'yes' and 'no'." I, in a lot of ways, tend to think very elvishly. Usually, my answers to life's questions involve a 'both-and' construction rather than an 'either-or.' It's just how I'm made. Perhaps it's because I'm a Canadian; I really don't know, but this kind of elf-think is a part of me from way back and is not likely to leave me any time soon.

So, getting back to the subject of our dreams and desires in life, I believe that there are some that we construct for ourselves, but actually, I believe that our dearest and deepest dreams and desires are shown to us by God, and when he shows them to us, we know them for our own because they were made specifically for us by Him. For instance, I used to dream of a very special place. It was a meadow in which a swift stream flowed and where the grass was soft and the air was cool, and it was very peaceful. Why I would dream of such a thing, considering I had never been in a meadow of any sort, I really don't know, but that place has come to represent rightness and goodness and purity in my life. The dream was that of a child, and I no longer have it as an actual vision of the night, but in another way, that dream is still a dream. The land has become a metaphor for something grand and beautiful, but also something simple and dear to the human heart. It is, in short, the peace that passeth understanding.

However, let's take the kind of dream I am really talking about here: the kind of dream that we build for our future selves. When I was sixteen, I felt what I thought was a very strong vocation to the religious life; I wanted to become a nun. This persisted and has continued to persist even till now, so that last November, I took three months to test out what it was like to live in a small womens' convent attached to a men's monastery and church in Hamilton. I love the Benedictine life. I think that I will always be a Benedictine Christian in some way. I loved the prayers we did there and I still pray them in my own life. I loved the philosophy upon which Benedict's monastic rule was built, and for me it seems a sure and steady way to follow that straight and narrow path which we as Christians are all called to follow. However, what I chiefly loved was the communal aspect of things. We shared meals. We each took turns cooking. We helped each other as and when we could. We were not alone, even though great emphasis was placed on private reading, prayer and study. The whole monastic life is built on charity and mercy, and is based on a mutual self-offering to one another and to God. It is the Christian life in microcosm but also intensified by this minuteness. The little day-to-day things become tests of our character and lessons for us, but all the while, there are others with us doing the same things and following the same process.

In the spring, after some time back here to reflect on my experience, I had every intention of returning there at my earliest convenience. I thought I had found what I was lacking. I thought I knew at last that I had a vocation and that I had to answer it. Of course, there were circumstances which intervened and which were beyond my control. To go into them here would take too long, but suffice it to say that it seemed very clear that God was letting me know that this life was not possible for me at this time, if indeed it would ever be possible. So I began questioning again. I began wondering if I really wanted to be a nun or perhaps just wanted to belong somewhere, to be needed and useful. This particular monastic community is really the only option for Benedictine monasticism in Orthodox Christianity, but there are other monastic houses of a more Greek or Russian or Romanian or Serbian (etc) stripe, and they're still Christian and still monastic, so why was I not willing to keep investigating? I felt this very irresistable pull to remain in this part of the world. Many of the women's houses I might have considered trying out are in the US. I felt a certain affirmation that I would know what all this was about in time.

You see, I had come to a suspicion that my monastic desire was more about beating back a certain emptiness I have felt in my life for some time. I live with my family now, and I am not physically alone very often, but there is still an aloneness which lingers and will not let go. I am a Christian in a household whose basic attitude to my faith is that it's something that they don't understand, and I have built a life here which is based primarily on my creative pursuits and not a whole lot on social interactions. In other words, I live in my head more often than not, and this can be a very strange place to be. We're not meant to live in our heads, to build castles in the air which block us from our fellow human beings: and it's this sort of dream or desire that I feel comes from our egos, our unsatisfied and ravenous egos. We wish for money, so we get a high-paying job that forces us to work insanely-long hours and we forget our friends and neighbours because of this. We wish to accumulate status-symbols for ourselves and we begin to alienate people who do not have these hallmarks of 'the good life.' I wish to create something truly beautiful, which in and of itself is not a bad thing, but there are times when this wish becomes an obsession so that I block out anything or anyone which might distract me from it.

What I have to come to terms with and to accept (and this is very difficult to do!) is that I was never happiest than when I had a partner in life: a man to love. I find myself minimizing this fact at every turn. In terms of my late fiance, I do this so that I don't rose-tint what was a very human and very falible relationship between two very human and very falible people, but even if we lived in separte houses, I knew that he was still with me. I knew we each thought of each other all the time. I mean, I would record a track for my album and I'd be thinking: 'what would he think of this?' It was glorious! It was also difficult, because anything worthy the winning is difficult, but it was all worth everything. We did offer ourselves to each other. We were, of course, two separate people, and had no intention of blending into each other to become one non-entity, but it was the dynamics of the interplay between our personalities that was so fascinating. So what am I really saying? I guess I thought that if the vocation died, there would be a hole where it had been, and now, well, that isn't the case. I have renewed confidence in myself because I tried to live a dream I had, and now, I think that the true dream that lay behind what may have been my own need to be different, to be someone out of the ordinary, may finally be surfacing. It may be that love--a thing both simple and yet in some ways beyond comprehension--is what I'm truly seeking, or what I am being told to seek. All I know is that if this blog has helped me to sift through all the debris which has kept me from seeing this truth, then glory to God for all things! There is a way that I have to go. I've known that much ever since I can remember. There is a right pattern to my life and some reason why I did not simply give up the ghost when I was a premature baby. I've had incredible bounty as well as unbelievable pain to sift through, and I'm not through living yet. It's time to go and see where life is going to take me, and I intend to do that! Perhaps it will not be 'the road less traveled by' that I take, but the worn and well-peopled road has its advantages as well. Still, it's in the yellow wood I stand and gaze at the choices before me, and while I stand thus musing, I will send up a grateful prayer to Him who knows all our roads, and say:

Deo Gratias!