Never can father or mother embrace their child, nor any person embrace another with so much love as God Almighty embraces the rational soul.
~Angela of Foligno (c. 1248-1309)
As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night,
while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?” These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival. Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God. My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember You from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar. Deep calls to deep at the roar of Your waterfalls; all Your breakers and Your waves have gone over me. By day the Lord commands His steadfast love, and at night His song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.
~ Insight from from the sons of Korah, in Psalm 42
Oh beloved it is true. We do have feelings and we do have thoughts. And to say that they do not, or should not, work together is to deny the beings we have been Designed to be. However, there is also a freedom from both which must be built up within us, or both will collapse in a heap when life gets to be too much of anything.
We hurt, and think we should do something to immediately make the pain go away.
We get excited, and think we should just instantly jump at the opportunity.
We are sad, and instantly think we should find comfort.
We are angry, and think we should find someone (else) to blame right away.
We are happy, and think we have put ourselves into this state.
And on it goes. This writer (hopefully) does not need to explain that our feelings can exert undue influence on our thoughts. It is, perhaps, the reflexes of infancy in us that simply grow more sophisticated – instead of growing into maturity.
The flipside of this is also true, and though the risk is more insidious, the outcomes can be more dangerous over time. Our thoughts (if not checked by others and Him) can drive our emotions beyond any sort of reasonable boundary.
We continually analyze a problem until it bleeds anxiety.
We measure the odds of success until the scenario is clouded with worry.
We think upon an object of desire until we are given over to fanatic obsession.
We dwell upon our weaknesses until we become frozen in fear.
We consider other’s perception of us until we feel we are nothing without their approval.
However, the problem is that we think we have to fix ourselves and make sure that we can control both feelings and thoughts. But the problem only compounds as we find that, the harder we try to control both, the further we get from getting things under control.
Beloved, our minds and our emotions are powerful beyond the strength of a simple man to control them. And this is an incredibly good thing. We, each of us, were made in the image of our Creator. We were Designed to be torrentially powerful thinkers and deeply compassionate feelers of the feelings we have.
However, just as this dynamic is ramped up to an infinite amplitude within the Trinity, we see that thought and feelings were never designed to be contained in the “black box” of a single mind. And actually, to try to do so, is to create a terrifying and tortuous imbalance in our being.
Can we see it? Hopefully it is simple enough. Every thought, and every feeling we have works best not when we try to balance one against the other. No, all of who we are (what we feel and what we think) works best when we do it in the context of a hopeful communion with G_d. And in fact, it is in this part of who we are, that we can find the greatest connection with Him.
For faith is about things we don’t see with our physical eyes. And everything we see is passing away, but the eternal dwells in our hearts; in the invisible space of our thoughts and feelings and connection with Him.
So, are you feeling as though your thoughts are spinning out of control? Do you think your feelings are too big to handle? You are right. Time to share them with the One who can make them all make sense and put them to work beyond your wildest dreams. Tonight is your night beloved. Time to allow your thoughts and feelings to find their strength in His.
