From a reading done in preparation for a weekend retreat:
"She longs for spiritual hygiene itself - and not just as a consolation prize when she cannot be rich and envied instead. She longs for other human beings: she wants to love them and to be loved by them. She hungers for social justice. She longs for nature, for its beauties and graces, for the sheer particularity of a squirrel with a nut. As we might expect, her longings dim from season to season. When they do, she longs to long again.
"Her motives include faith - a quiet confidence in God and in the mercies of God that radiate from the self-giving work of Jesus Christ. She knows God is good; she also feels assured that God is good to her. Her faith secures her against the ceaseless oscillations of pride and despair familiar to every human being who has taken refuge in the cave of her own being and tried there to bury all her insecurities under a mound of achievements. When her faith slips, she retains faith enough to believe that the Spirit of God, whose presence is her renewable resource, will one day secure her faith again."
~ Plantinga, Not the Way It's Supposed to Be; a breviary of sin.
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