burning desire

I just started reading The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality by Ronald Rolheiser. Rolheiser’s grasp of and ability to articulate reality at a profound level is impressive. The other book, described as a precursor, is called The Shattered Lantern. I highly recommend both.

Rolheiser starts Part I of The Holy Longing with this poem of the same name by Goethe. Take a long in-breath, exhale slowly, and read.


Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,
Because the massman will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
What longs to be burned to death.

In the calm water of the love-nights,
where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you
when you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught
in the obsession with darkness,
and a desire for higher love-making
sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter,
now, arriving in magic, flying,
and finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are gone.

And so long as you haven’t experienced
this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest
on the dark earth.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "The Holy Longing"