The Heart’s Longing

Many years ago I read a book called, At the Root of This  Longing.  As I recall, the book was about reconciling feminism with Christianity. I don’t remember much about the book except for the title, but the title resonates in a particularly soulful way.

I have always had deep longing and a hunger for something greater than myself. Even as a child I was filled with a burning desire to feel union with the Holy.   I have pursued this longing of my soul my entire life. This pursuit has led me to deconstruct the religion of my childhood, which filled me with guilt and terror, to find a construct of Divinity that made my Soul feel loved and nurtured.

I believe that we as humans are wired with an innate longing for deep relationship with something greater than ourselves. There is this place in us that knows that there is more than this finite life, and we want to be connected to that Source in the deepest part of ourselves.  Every human culture across space and time has its gods and goddesses. Every human is drawn to worship something.

In our modern world, we have lost touch with what the deep longing of our Souls is all about. We attempt to fill that hunger for Spirit with things of the world. We think that material wealth, food, alcohol, sex, religion, power, fame – you name it – will assuage that deep longing inside of us. And we may be filled for a while. However, each time we go back to that thing which we use to fill us, we need more and more to be satisfied. Eventually we become addicts, slaves to whatever seems to fill the void in the moment.

The Patriarchal construct on which our society is built contributes greatly to this conundrum. The Patriarchy doesn’t value the things of the Soul, but rather the things that are outside ourselves. The demand is always to strive for bigger and better.  

The Patriarchal God is located outside of ourselves and can only be reached through some kind of intermediary. HE (and it is always a he) is that judgmental guy in the sky, who grants or denies our wishes like the proverbial good fairy. He demands that we devalue the body, the dark, the other, the Feminine, and that we pay homage only to him. Under Patriarchy we are taught that there is only one way to that God in the sky – and each of the sky God’s religions will go to war with the others to defend their one way as the only correct way.

But what if there is a different way to fill the void? What if that deep longing takes us inward to a source inside of ourselves, not outside? What if that longing can be filled will a deep and profound love that doesn’t require us to deny who we are? What if the nature of Spirit is that of the endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth? What if we could reconnect to the innate nature of the universe, the nature that just is and the nature that we are a part of?

As I have become more and more led to the Deep and Sacred Feminine, I have found that She doesn’t require us to contort ourselves into something that we are not. She meets us where we are with love and acceptance. She loves the dark and the light. She loves the body and the Soul. She doesn’t deny the physical, the sexual, the playful, the creative. She celebrates all of life, including both birth and death and light and dark. She brings balance to the Masculine and Feminine. She is infinitely loving and compassionate. She invites us to co-create with her a life of connection, relationships, simplicity, and creativity. The void, that deep longing then becomes the fertile womb where we become whole, the place where we are filled with a profound love and filled by the sacred connection that we have longed for.

What is the deep longing of your Soul and how do you fill it?

Barbara Garland
April, 2021