Breath of the Spirit Reflection: The Holiness of Desire

October 21, 2021

Maggie Annkel

<div class=oldwebkit><div class=mobile-full><br><p class=Paragraph SCXW3067354 BCX0><em>Breath of the Spirit is our electronic spiritual and liturgical resource for our members and potential members. Nothing can replace your chapter or other faith community but we hope you will find further support here for integrating your spirituality with your sexuality and all the strands of your life. </em><em><a href=https://www.dignityusa.org/civicrm/mailing/subscribe>Get Breath of the Spirit scripture reflections in your inbox every week</a>.</em></p><p class=Paragraph SCXW3067354 BCX0><span style=color: #ffffff;><em>-</em></span></p></div></div><div class=oldwebkit></div><div class=oldwebkit> <div class=oldwebkit><div class=mobile-full><p class=Paragraph SCXW3067354 BCX0><span style=color: #ffffff;><em>-</em></span></p></div></div><div class=oldwebkit></div></div><div class=oldwebkit><p><span style=color: #000000;>All of us but especially those in the LGBTQ+ community are used to hearing that our desires are wrong. We have heard that they should not be given voice and really it would be better if they would just go away. This violence in the guise of spirituality happens to anyone who is told that turning their humanity off is the best path to earning Divine comfort. The Incarnation itself puts the lie to this theology of deprivation but so too does the story of Bartimaeus the bold and blind beggar who would not let his desires be silenced. Although most anyone could conjure up hypothetical desires that should not be fulfilled Bartimaeus and Jesus generous response remind us that desire itself is an essential part of our humanity and as such is also essential to the holiness and wholeness for which we were created.</span></p></div><div class=oldwebkit><span style=color: #000000;> </span></div><div class=oldwebkit><p><span style=color: #000000;><strong>Sunday October 24 2021: the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B </strong></span></p><p><span style=color: #000000;>Jeremiah 31:7-9 </span><br><span style=color: #000000;>Psalm 126:1-2 2-3 4-5 6 </span><br><span style=color: #000000;>Hebrews 5:1-6 </span><br><span style=color: #000000;>Mark 10:46-52 </span><br><span style=color: #000000;> </span><br><span style=color: #000000;><strong>The Holiness of Desire </strong></span><br><span style=color: #000000;>A Reflection by L. F. Ranner </span></p><p><span style=color: #000000;><em>What do you want me to do for you? </em></span><br><span style=color: #000000;>From an early age most of us are taught to be skeptical of desire. We are encouraged to focus on distinguishing between need and want (as anyone who has ever made a grocery trip with a toddler can attest this distinction does not come naturally to humans) eschewing the latter and being content with the former; its the selfless sensible thing to do.  </span></p><p><span style=color: #000000;>The Buddha built a whole spiritual movement around the concept of desire as the source of all suffering. Desire he said inevitably leads to dissatisfaction rooted either in anxiety about what possession we might lose or regret over what we once had.  </span></p><p><span style=color: #000000;>In a similar if less strident vein the Greeks sought to temper desire with the maxim <em>meden agan</em> or nothing in excess. Desire what you must but be moderate and tasteful about it for heavenss sake. Know when to say when.  </span></p><p><span style=color: #000000;>Already in the formative period of Christianity influenced by both the Greeks and Judaism Church Fathers counseled the faithful to distinguish between holy desire - which had as its aim union with the divine will and involved almost exclusively the spiritual side of our beings - and unholy or sinful desire which was seen to separate us from God and humanity; physical desires were most commonly relegated to this second category simply by their nature as being grounded in the flesh. </span></p><p><span style=color: #000000;>In Marks gospel the story of blind Bartimaeus is the very last miracle before Palm Sunday and as such it provides a kind of bookend to Jesus healing ministry; it literally occurs at the walls of Jericho (yes those walls!) as Jesus and the disciples are about to set out on the fateful last journey up to Jerusalem. In this extraordinary meeting Jesus turns much of the received wisdom regarding desire on its head. It is a manifesto for the holiness and even the necessity of desire.  </span></p><p><span style=color: #000000;>Who is this Bartimaeus that he should be immortalized by the evangelist at such a pivotal moment? Mark records him not as just another faceless beggar; he is a person with both a history and a name. We learn his weakness (financial dependency) we know his problem (blindness) and by extension his deepest desire which is to be healed. </span></p><p><span style=color: #000000;>Bartimaeus is the manifestation of the inherent skinlessness that comes with poverty. Materially lacking physically limited and as a result socially excluded Bartimaeus does not enjoy the sense of self-sufficiency with which we so often delude ourselves until life proves us wrong. He has none of the traditional shields that people hide behind: prosperity strength privilege. The disadvantaged often grow accustomed to expressing their needs openly - as Bartimaeus does on a daily basis as a beggar - because they cannot afford the illusion much less the reality of their satisfaction. The more dependent we are on others the less optional honesty becomes. This may be one reason why Jesus was drawn to those who are poor in different ways because Jesus too was a person without pretense and with no time to waste on the building of illusions. Jesus is an originator of this idea for example that there is no true strength without vulnerability and it makes sense that such a message would resonate with people for whom it was a home truth. </span></p><p><span style=color: #000000;>Mark tells us that many of the large crowd surrounding Jesus rebuke Bartimaeus when he cries out for Jesus attention. Rebuke is such an archaic-sounding word and it leeches away some of the slightly comic and very familiar urgency of the original: really they tried to shush him the way we do with someone who is speaking up at an inappropriate time in an unappreciated way who is making the real work at hand more difficult for everyone. Why would they do such a thing? Did he seem impertinent? Irrelevant? Presumptuous? Were this unsightly person and his insistent needs an annoyance or an embarrassment? </span></p><p><span style=color: #000000;>However their attempts to silence Bartimaeus come to nothing and he ends up getting Jesus attention: crucially not because Jesus was making use of some superhuman powers to hear a beggars mumblings through a mob but because Bartimaeus despite or perhaps because he was being shushed by almost everyone <em>started yelling all the louder. </em> </span></p><p><span style=color: #000000;>This is a crucial moment. Here the most powerless person the one who is denuded not only of wealth and privilege but one of the bodys most basic functions - the poorest person in the picture - not only refuses to be silenced but he takes matters into his own hands. He knows what he wants he sees the opportunity to achieve it he ignores those who would deny him and he demands in a voice unreasonably tastelessly loud to be heard.  </span></p><p><span style=color: #000000;>The desire that Bartimaeus brings to Jesus in the next few lines is for many of us a central component of the human experience: to live in darkness to crave healing and light. To know what is lacking to make us whole - and to wait sometimes for many years in fear and impotence being shushed by the world. <em>Shut up and deal with it</em> the world says. <em>Learn to do without.</em> We dont know how long Bartimaeus has been blind or how he got that way. We do know that he is someone who struggles alone: no family is caring for him making sure hes fed and clothed and he dwells outside walls with the rest of the beggars amid the garbage heaps: he is a man of no apparent value.  </span></p><p><span style=color: #000000;>And yet: despite all that he is a person of immense dignity. In this story it is Bartimaeus not Jesus who makes things happen. He knows what he wants; he is sure. Because when Jesus passes by - on a journey one might imagine that has far greater cosmic implications than the wholeness of one blind man - Bartimaeus is ready. He uses the powers that remain - voice will - to call to Jesus not just to murmur but to shout out his holy desire that he believes this person  - whom he boldly refers to as the Son of David - can make a reality.  </span></p><p><span style=color: #000000;>And despite the road that lies ahead Jesus stops; it seems that Jesus always stops. Unlike us Jesus so often has time for the people who crave his attention.   </span></p><p><span style=color: #000000;>Jesus tells the disciples to call Bartimaeus - a crucial detail because sometimes Jesus call to us his answer to our desires comes through an intermediary that we least expect. In this case it is probably some of the very people who were trying to shut Bartimaeus up to whom Jesus now (very cleverly) gives the task of calling him over. Bartimaeus admits no obstacles: even his cloak probably the closest thing he has to a shelter from the world he tosses aside without a care; he leaps up and suddenly it is Bartimaeus who is control of this scene.  </span></p><p><span style=color: #000000;>What do you want me to do for you? </span></p><p><span style=color: #000000;>The word that Jesus uses to refer to Bartimaeus desire is theleis; it is a speculative word: whats the thing that you have in mind for me to do but have insufficient power to make happen? At this moment Jesus recognizes the sacred generative quality of Bartimaeus desire: nothing happens without wanting it first. Jesus in other words is there as a medium to help Bartimaeus achieve the fulfillment of this desire to see. It is the blind man who makes the difference: the persistence of his hope his stubborn opportunism that refuses to be degraded or silenced that shouts out: <em>have mercy on me! My desire is holy and real!</em> And that is a cry that stops Jesus because the road to Jerusalem and all that awaits Jesus there cannot be traveled unless this man of no account is answered. At that moment the beggar goes toe to toe with God: <em>I want to see. </em> </span></p><p><span style=color: #000000;>And what happens? Bartimaeus gets what he asks for; Jesus makes a point of telling him why. This passage is usually translated as Your faith has healed you. This would be revolutionary enough as the agent of transformation Jesus names is no one else but the destitute Bartimaeus himself. But once more translation can impoverish meaning as the word <em>pistis</em> can be read not just as faith or trust but also as confidence.  In other words not just that Bartimaeus put his trust in Gods healing power but that he was brash enough to call it forth. In this story that brings Jesus ministry to a close there is a hidden miracle whose message is even more astonishing than that of sight returned to a blind man: through the attention of Jesus to exactly that person that no one else wants to see or hear Bartimaeus the beggar becomes transfigured into the hero his own miracle worker. This is my holy desire he cries out the missing thing that will make me whole and nothing - including the worlds rebuke - will silence my demand to be heard and healed.  </span></p></div><div class=oldwebkit><span style=color: #000000;> </span></div><div class=oldwebkit><div class=mobile-full><span style=color: #000000;><img class=mobile-full src=https://www.dignityusa.org/sites/default/files/civicrm/persist/contribute/images/uploads/static/botslori_6eca7868e09ee2f8c707d56cbe1da584.png alt= width=120 hspace=0 vspace=0></span></div><div class=mobile-full></div><div class=mobile-full><p><span style=color: #000000;><strong>Lori Frey Ranner</strong> is a New Orleans native. She holds a double B.A. in History and Classics from Loyola University New Orleans and an M.Phil. in Byzantine Studies from the University of Oxford (Keble 1996) with a concentration in Ecclesiastical History. Her area of academic specialization is Latin and Greek ecumenical relations in the period following the Fourth Crusade. Between 1999-2014 she held the post of extraordinary lecturer at Loyola New Orleans in the Departments of History and Classics. For the past seven years she has taught Latin Ancient Greek World Religions and Honors/AP World History at Holy Cross School and Ursuline Academy; she currently teaches AP World History and British Literature at The Academy of the Sacred Heart. She is married and mother to three children. In May of this year she published her first novel Sailing to Byzantium.</span></p></div></div><div class=oldwebkit><span style=color: #000000;><img style=font-style: italic; background-color: transparent; font-size: 13.008px; src=https://www.dignityusa.org/civicrm/mailing/open?qid= alt= width=1 height=1></span></div><p></p>

Breath of the Spirit Reflection: The Holiness of Desire

Subscribe to Our Newsletter