Summer Reading: Part One

I want to share some passages from the most recent non-fiction book I am reading, a best seller called, Eat, Pray, Love - One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert. Penguin Books, 2006.

Liz is in Italy. Not to study or to work or even to visit friends and family. She begins to wonder what she is doing there. It occurs to her that what she is really trying to do is remember how to experience pleasure and she begins to feel a bit panicked as to how one goes about doing that. It is not her cultural paradigm no more is it for most of us. Americans, she writes, have an inability to relax into sheer pleasure. We're good at seeking entertainment but that is a very different quest, one that seeks diversion rather than getting in touch with that which may bring us joy. In addition, our quasi-religious, puritanical guilt kicks in and asks us, "Do I really deserve this pleasure? Have I 'earned' it?"

I can relate. But where does this belong in my theological understanding? Clearly, there are some kinds of pleasure that are life giving and others that are not. But maybe even that is the wrong question to bring to pleasure, a cost/benefit analysis. I certainly reject the idea that good things are earned. Our God is not in the business of measuring our deserved-ness for joy any more than we are sized up as deserving of punishment. If you question that assumption, well, we have other issues to discuss!

I am coming to think that feeling guilty about pleasure for pleasure sake is what we might call 'sin' - sin defined as 'something that distorts our relationship with God, other people, or Creation'. BCP. pg. 848. God has created this world and all that is contained in it for God's pleasure and for ours. If we fail to participate in this delight then we are cut-off from a critical element of relationship with our Creator and all that surrounds us. What if we began an exploration of pleasure by praying:

'God, I seek the things that give you joy. I seek the things that you know will bring me joy. I pray that you may teach my heart not to assume there is some better, less indulgent way to spend my time. Teach my heart to see how pleasure is a part of your plan for me and allow me to see how my relationship with You and others is strengthened by this exploration'.