In his movie, Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky portrays three men on a journey: Professor, Writer, and Stalker, their guide. The goal of this journey is the Room. Stalker tells them that in the Room, they will achieve their heart’s desires. All of their dreams will come true. They will get exactly what they want.
After an arduous journey, they are on the threshold of the Room. As the Stalker has promised, they are about to have all their desires realized. And both Professor and Writer get cold feet; they are hesitant to enter the Room.
In his book about this film, Zona, Geoff Dyer wonders why. Why do they hesitate? Dyer says they hesitate because they realize: What if I don’t know what I want? Well, Stalker says, that’s for the room to decide. The Room reveals all: what you get is not what you think you wish for but what you most deeply wish for.
If you were asked what you most deeply long for, what you ultimately love, well, of course, you know the right answer.
You know what you ought to say. And what you state could be entirely genuine and authentic, a true expression of your intellectual conviction and your deep beliefs. But would you want to step into the Room? Are you confident that what you think you love aligns with your innermost longings?
The names of the characters in Tarkovsky’s film are revealing. Professor and Writer are expressions of the “You are what you think” and “You are what you believe” stances. We have explored the power of these stances and how prevalent they are in the world around us. And yet, from the place of these stances, these characters are hesitant to enter the room. It is not about what you think you wish for but what you most deeply wish for.
The two disciples of John the Baptist in the first chapter of the John’s gospel are similar to Professor and Writer on the threshold of the Room. After hearing the Baptist speak in glowing terms about Jesus, they are intrigued and begin following Jesus. Suddenly, Jesus turns around and asks them a powerful question: What do you want? What are you looking for?
Their response is startling: Where are you staying? Nothing like answering a question with a question, especially when it is a deeply probing question. It’s similar to Professor and Writer getting to the threshold of the Room and being hesitant to enter. These two disciples have to search their hearts and ask themselves: What, really, do I want? What, really, am I looking for? Fortunately, Jesus responds with an invitation, “Come and see.” Not come and see where I am staying, but come and see and explore what your heart really desires.
John’s gospel gives us another example that describes how understanding desire is the foundation of the spiritual journey. In Jerusalem, Jesus encounters a man who has been ill for 38 years. Jesus senses the man’s condition, and then, asks him a startling question: “Do you want to be made well?” If it was anyone but Jesus, we would think the question is mocking in nature. But notice how the man responds. He doesn’t shout as loud as he can: YES. He makes an excuse or offers an explanation: I don’t have anyone to put me in the water when it stirs. With his question, Jesus is asking him to consider: What, really, do you want and desire?
Irenaeus, one of the early church fathers, declared that “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”
This is a dynamic picture. The glory of God is not a human being fully informed or a human being with deep belief. To be human is to be for something, directed toward something, oriented toward something. As one person has said, “We are like existential sharks; we have to move to live.”
Paul speaks these words in Philippians 1:
9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.
In his commentary on these verses, James K. A. Smith says: “If you read quickly you come away with the impression that Paul is primarily concerned about knowledge. You might think that Paul is praying that Christians would deepen their knowledge so they will know what to love. In fact, Paul’s prayer is the inverse. He prays that their love might abound more and more because, in some sense, love is the condition of knowledge. It’s not that I know in order to love; I love in order to know” (You Are What You Love).
From the framework of desire, a lot of the work of spiritual formation is about exploring how desire can become disordered. The contexts of our struggles are not just misguided thinking or wrong beliefs; they are also the manifestations of disordered desire. For while desire is one of the things that makes us deeply human, desire is also the place where our humanity becomes distorted. In fact, the desire that is properly ordered to love God can become so disordered that “we relate to the world in ways that are harmful to us while forgetting or distorting our awareness of the one good that most deeply satisfies us” (Wendy Farley, The Wounding and Healing of Desire).
Gerald May talks about how the awakening of the heart to its deepest desire may happen in a sudden flash, but more often it feels like emerging from a dream, passing through “many layers of dulled, automatic responses” (May, An Awakened Heart, 50) before having an encounter with the true aliveness of the heart. He talks about asking a young woman with whom he was working what she most deeply wanted. Her immediate response was about a “happy home and family, security, a sense of being worthwhile” (May, 50). Sensing the automatic nature of her answers, he asked her to sit in silence for a moment and “try to be open to what desires she could really feel, right in the moment” (May, 50).
May describes how her face softened, tears begin to form in her eyes. He could tell that the words she spoke came from a place deep within her. An honest place. Not a place of ideas or beliefs, but a place of desire and love.