Vanity Fair
About this episode
The episode explores the tension between emotional disappointment and joy, and the struggle to maintain genuine engagement with life and faith.
"Don't be afraid of embracing the disappointment you feel, old or new. Don't be scared of the unreasonable joy either. They're the highway markers home." We snort with disdain at such quaint sentiments, and our choice made, strike off down the straight highway of discipline and duty. All goes well for a while, sometimes for years, until we begin to realize that we're really not feeling much anymore. We find ourselves struggling to weep with those who weep or even rejoice with those who rejoice. Mostly we don't bother looking people in the eye. They may want to engage us and nothing much inside feels very engaged. Our passions begin to show up in inappropriate fantasies and longings interspersed with depression, anxieties, and anger we thought we had left behind. With a start, we realize our heart has stolen away in the baggage. It is taking the journey with us but under protest. We redouble our efforts at discipline to get it to knuckle under but it refuses. Some of us finally kill it well enough that it no longer speaks as long as we're occupied. Any quasi-redemptive busyness will do. We look as if we're still believing. Others of us decide the deadness is too high a price to…
More episodes of Daily Readings by Wild at Heart
- A Fear of Passion?
- Carrying Others
- A Glory We Were Meant For
- Failure is Ripe with Goodness
- The Stream of Healing
- Dignity of Causation
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