*As voorgereg: gaan luister “The Whole Of The Moon” (die 1985-treffer deur die Waterboys, maar Fiona Apple se cover is net so lekker) wat geskoei is op woorde van C.S. Lewis.
Self-portrait
It doesn’t interest me if there is one God
Or many gods.
I want to know if you belong — or feel abandoned;
If you know despair
Or can see it in others.
I want to know
If you are prepared to live in the world
With its harsh need to change you;
If you can look back with firm eyes
Saying “this is where I stand.”
I want to know if you know how to melt
Into that fierce heat of living
Falling toward the center of your longing.
I want to know if you are willing
To live day by day
With the consequence of love
And the bitter unwanted passion
Of your sure defeat.
I have been told
In that fierce embrace
Even the gods
Speak of God.
David Whyte – Fire in the Earth
In haar boek “Bittersweet – How Sorrow and Longing Makes Us Whole” beskryf Susan Cain verlange as momentum wat vermom is. Hunkering is eintlik nie iets wat in woorde beskryf kan word nie – Leonard Cohen het bitter naby gekom, C.S. Lewis ook, so ook Thomas Merton, Rumi, David Whyte, Sheila Cussons… om maar net ‘n paar te noem. Die ding met iets soos verlange (en daar is niks soos verlange nie) – die anderkant-naam-goed wat ons nie weet wat om mee te doen nie – daai goed kan iets met ons doen. Dit kan ons transformeer. As, ás ons dit insluit, ruimte maak daarvoor in ons lewens.
Hunkering is meestal gelyk gestel aan brandende begeertes (“die vieslike vlees”) in die kerk met die gevolg dat, soos mense maar is, die meeste dit óf onderdruk óf opblaas. As verlange ontken word, versmoor dit. As dit opgeblaas word, kan dit ontplof. As ons leef met hunkering as ‘n deel van ons Godsaad – ons geskapenheid, ons menswees – kan dit ons huis toe vat.
Longing, felt fully, carries us to belonging.
Tara Brach
Die Woord is ook ‘n verslag van verlange. Hoe anders – iemand het een keer gesê spiritualiteit het alles te make met wat jy doen met jou verlangens.
Longing is the sweet pain of belonging to God.
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
In Psalm 107, ‘n inleiding van die vyfde en laaste Psalmboek, is daar geskryf:
For he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things.
Psalm 107:9
Die betekenis van die woord “satisfies” kom van satis wat “genoeg” beteken. Hy is genoeg vir die verlangende siel. Verlange en vergenoegdheid is dus nie teenoorgesteldes of onversoenbare pole nie. Verlange lyk eerder soos ‘n voorwaarde vir vergenoegdheid. Hunkering vir tuiskoms. Heimwee vir die huis.
This desire for our own far-off country [is] the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter.
The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things — the beauty, the memory of our own past — are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited.
C.S. Lewis
Die geheim wat ons nie kan wegsteek nie en nie kan verklap nie, al wil ons so graag albei doen. Die gebreekte Halleluja, die kraak in alles, die lig wat skyn deur nederlae, onvolmaaktheid en gebrokenheid… maar hoe verkoop mens dit? Leonard Cohen se platemaatskappy het op ‘n stadium gegrap dat hulle skeermeslemmetjies moet uitdeel saam met sy albums. En tog wys navorsing dat mense hulle “happy songs” gemiddeld 125 keer luister terwyl die bittersoetes om en by 800 keer geluister word.
Whatever pain you can’t get rid of, make it your creative offering.
Leonard Cohen
Sheila Cussons begin haar klassieke gedig Christ of the burnt men (geskoei op woorde van Thomas Merton) met die woorde,
Jy sal ook al hoe meer wen, glimlaggende
skerts-oog, blink-oog Christus
wat dui op Jesus se onblusbare menswees en gees. Die woord blink-oog kan egter dui op meer as waaksaam en wakker (soos in “bright-eyed and bushy-tailed”) of lewendig en vol verwagting; dit kan ook wees met ‘n traan in die oog … of beter nog: beide! Later in die aangrypende gedig wat alles te make het met verlange en vuur en verandering skryf sy:
En ek begryp, jy het my geteken vir die avontuur
van jóú, ek wat vuur bemin en altyd waaghalsig was
… die avontuur van jóú – die opwinding, die onsekerheid, die gevare, die bruising van bloed deur die are wat ‘n avontuur inhou.
“Longing is the transfiguration of aloneness, the defenseless interior secret core of a person receiving its overdue invitation from the moon, the stars, the night horizon, and the great tidal flows of life and love.
Longing is divine discontent; the unendurable present, finding a physical doorway to awe and discovery that frightens and emboldens, humiliates and beckons, makes us into pilgrim souls and sets us on a road that starts in the center of the body and then leads out, like an uncaring invitation, like a comet’s tail, felt like both an unrelenting ache and a tidal pull at one and the same time, making us willing to give up our perfect house, our paid-for home and our accumulated belongings.
Longing is felt through the lens and ache of the body, magnifying and bringing the horizon close, as if the horizon were both a lifetime’s journey away and living deep inside at some unknown core – as if we were coming home into a beautifully familiar, condensed strangeness.”
David Whyte
*As jy nog plek het vir nagereg: Gebed deur Sheila Cussons en enigiets van Leonard Cohen vir ‘n nightcap.
Deur Frieda van den Heever