Alison 5 of 9

5. The interface of desire and voices

Now here’s the trouble with spending time in the larder, removed from the eyes of your public, unable to act out. You gradually start to lose “who you are”. You start to dwell in the strange place which I call the interface between your “own” desire, very small, and only tentatively coming into being, timidly and somewhat shamefacedly, and the voices which run you, and which you have in fact so perfectly ventriloquised. I presume I’m not unique in having, after some time spent alone, occasionally detected the person who was speaking through me – the voice of my father or mother, or a headmaster, or some admired teacher, or political or religious leader. In other words, I had been giving voice to a pattern of desire taken on board from someone else. And of course, doing it with all the conviction of it being really me who was talking and desiring.

And that can be quite a shocking moment, as I realise how easily I have allowed myself to put aside, and indeed even to trample on, whatever delicate hints were pulling me in other less strident directions, and have instead rushed headlong into the first “persona” that seemed to give me a chance of being someone who counts. It is only with time spent in the larder that I may find that the One who sees me in secret is actually calling forth a quite different and richer set of desires, without such an easy and narrow straightjacket as my current persona. Furthermore, the One who sees in secret seems to be in much less of a hurry for me to avoid shame and “measure up” than I normally am.

Imagine, if you will, a childhood scene. Little Johnny is about to go to bed. Mummy comes to tuck him in and says “Little Johnny, did you say your prayers?” “Yes Mummy”. “Good, little Johnny. And what did you ask for in your prayers?” “I asked for… chocolate pudding tomorrow and for Arsenal to win on Saturday” “Oh no, little Johnny, you shouldn’t ask for chocolate pudding tomorrow and for Arsenal to win on Saturday. You should be praying for an end to suffering in the Middle East, relief for the famine in Bangladesh and the Holy Father’s Mission intentions for the month of May!”. Well, of course, little Johnny will take this on board. His smelly little desires have been urinated upon from a very great height, and he has been taught to despise them and instead to want much more “noble” things, things that will make him stand tall in the world of his parents. In fact, he has been taught St Matthew’s Gospel in reverse: desire according to the social other so as to get approval.

Here’s the thing: little Johnny is fast on the road to becoming a perfect puritan, a dweller in a world in which there are things that are nice but naughty, things one wants but shouldn’t say so, but also one in which there are things which are good but boring, which one doesn’t really want, but should at least say you do.

The curious thing is that, if we are to believe the Gospel, this is the reverse pattern of what God wants. It would appear that “Your Father who sees in secret” doesn’t despise our smelly little desires, and in fact, suggests that if only we can hold on to them, and insist on articulating them, that we will actually find for ourselves, over time, that we want more than those desires, but we really do want something with a passion. In other words, he takes us seriously in our weakness and unimportance, even when we don’t. If we learn to give some voice to those desires, then there’s a chance over time that we may move through them organically until we find ourselves the sort of humungous desirers who throw ourselves into peace work in the Middle East, or into famine-relief in Bangladesh, or even into being the sort of missionary for whom the Holy Father wants people to pray in May. But we’ll be doing so because we, who start from not really knowing what we want, by not despising our little desires, and learning to articulate them, have discovered from within that this is what we really want. And in our wanting will be who we come to be.