Passionate Folly

I am reading the popular book, Eat, Pray, Love.  Right now I am with Elizabeth Gilbert meditating with her guru and Richard from Texas in an Ashram at an undisclosed site in India. I was drawn reading this because there are times when I would love to run away from home and travel around the world for a year. The book is subtitled "One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia". The author characterized her own quest as "spiritual investigation".  Elizabeth began her quest by spending four months in Italy, eating. I must admit that I am ever so slightly jealous. I can definitely picture myself devoting a full third of a year to eating Italian food. In Italy.

The problem is that Elizabeth Gilbert is on the wrong quest. 

The book made me sad. Not sad is in sorry for myself because I am not reading it over a cafe table in Venice, but sad for Elizabeth. Spiritual investigation is a noble pursuit, but I think she got on the wrong train. As I read, I wanted to gently tap Elizabeth on the shoulder, and tell her I think she missed the one thing that ultimately matters. I can't judge her, all of us, every human being ever, has made the same mistake.

Like kids on an Easter egg hunt we continually overlook the prize that is hidden in plain sight, and hunt where it can't be found.

John Piper, in a personal communication quoted in Larry Crabb's manual to his School of Spiritual Direction, called this syndrome the "treasonous pursuit of satisfaction from the wrong source".  All of us turn to something and demand that it satisfy, or at least numb, our thirsts. We want husbands who faithfully adore us, adventure, financial stability, good health, good looks, gelato, ... Don't get me wrong, these are all good things, but they make poor gods.

The old fashioned, out-of-style, modernly offensive word used to refer to the search for satisfaction in all of the wrong places is sin.  The prophet Jeremiah speaks for God in Jeremiah 2:13 "My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water."

So, I must ask: where have I, in my thirst, strolled past the fountain of living waters in order to drink from a broken cistern that can hold no water? Have I searched for everything when I should have been searching for one thing, or more precisely one relationship instead?