longing
“When longing dies,” John O’Donohue says, “creativity ceases.” There is a craving at the center of all creation. An ancient aching. Alive, and teeming, and permeating. An unruly restlessness. A wanting that goes on wanting ever more desirously. A burning refusing to be satisfied. Refusing to be sated. Refusing to be still.
It is neither a failure, a flaw, nor a deficiency. It is the engine of existing.
Every act of making, every courageous deed, every tender gesture, all our boisterous reaching, all our quiet needs, all emerges from the holy hunger at the heart of the world. From the luminous and wild yearning that stirs beneath the surface of what seems ordinary.
It is the fertile catalyst for growth, for hope, for transfiguration, for transformation, for change.
Without longing we live within an emptiness, an apathy, a vacancy. Within it we are more dangerously and beautifully alive than we have ever been. It is teh procreative force that drives life, love, and everything in between.
May the holy hunger never leave you.
May your aching restlessness go on wanting, wild and unashamed.
May your longing be the light that leads you home.
In case no one’s told you today, I love you with all my everything.
***special thanks to Kimberly Warner and her post “In defense of longing” that inspired this post.
p.s. - I added a new print to my shop.
Beautiful, Duane. And this reminds me of the book From Where You Dream by Robert Olen Butler. He’s talking about writing fiction, but a lot of it is broadly generalizable.
Beautiful collages, Duane. And the thoughts as well. But I wouldn’t be so sure that creativity arises only from suffering and longing for something.
I think it can also come from pure joy and a childlike sense of play. From celebration of life.