Longings

by Jim Brommers Bergquist

I remember being a pre-teen kid and playing in the late afternoon with my neighborhood friends, when the calls from our various mothers and fathers would echo down the street, informing us with a sense of urgency that dinner was ready. And while we didn’t want to end whatever we were doing at the time–usually riding bikes, kicking the can, or performing some athletic feat– we knew that something good awaited us on the table. (Our mothers seldom let us down, except for the occasional attempts to make liver and brussel sprouts palatable.) We were also well aware that we had better listen to our parents when they gave a command, as we had been reminded many times that “they knew what was best for us.”

Longings

Now it is twenty-five years later and I’m thinking about this idea of call. (I wish it was a yell telling me what to do. Instead, I’m often straining to hear what sounds like an indecipherable whisper.)

There is a painting by Salvador Dali called Girl Standing at the Window that recently caught my attention. I was working on a worship service that allowed participants to reflect on two themes while viewing and creating pieces of art, and in my hunt for the perfect image, this one held me breathless.

Our service focused on the themes of “Longings” and “Living Into Our Giftedness.” At the beginning of the service, we asked the worshipers to sit in silence and ponder their deepest desires, where they thought these desires came from, and how they might make these longings a reality. At this time, we projected Dali’s painting, which shows a woman peering through an open window and across the sea.

The image evokes a sense of desire, wishful thinking, sadness, and rumination – as if our character wants to leave where she is and sail out into the unknown. I get the sense that she longs to take a voyage, that she peers through that window every day, wondering why she’s not leaving the safety of her home and venturing into unknown waters. Maybe the reason I feel so drawn to this picture is that something in me feels called to something new and unknown – or at least a life better lived.

Everything

The main goal of St. Ignatius of Loyola (founder of the Jesuits) was “to seek and find God in everything.” A struggle for me, however, is to embrace that this “everything” includes me. I’m too aware of my faults and my past stumblings, my inadequacies as a spouse, friend, parent, and “person of faith” (I’m lucky to make any time for quiet or reflection, I seldom exercise, and I eat lots of junk food). So why God would want to reside in this spiritual and physical toxic waste dump?

Yet what I hear in the word “call” is the idea of being drawn to something, of being in motion and having God use the gifts within me. Living out my call means believing that God can be in my longings and desires, then living in a way that acts on these longings. When I spend time doing the simple things like writing, working at a shelter, playing with my girls, going on a date with my wife, listening to a student, having a beer with a friend, or calling my grandmother, God becomes present in the world through me.

 (Once I get that figured out, I can start working on “loving God with my heart, soul, mind, and strength; and loving my neighbor as myself.”)

Flicker

I may never have something as obvious as a burning bush to illumine God’s direction for my life, but the flicker of the Divine is in me. So when I let my fears, sense of inadequacy, or schedule keep me from stepping into spaces where my longings are pointing me, I commit a sort of “sin of omission” when not living into my gifts.

So I live and play, and listen for the call – or echo – of something Other (one who “knows what’s best for me”), because I know that just as a flicker gets larger with oxygen, it is in those spaces where my deepest desires and longings are acted on that I am moving toward my call – and where my experience of God grows into a flame. And where I get to feast on something much better than liver and brussel sprouts.

Jim Brommers Bergquist is an ordained Protestant minister and works as Minister for Retreats at Seattle University. A lover of film, music, and pop culture, he delights in how people’s longings for God show up in the world around us. Jim and his wife live in Seattle with their two daughters Harper and Ellis. Longings