I had a heart to heart with my prayer life this weekend after reading Bradley Nasif's essay The Poverty of Love (part of the Christian Vision Project). As an Eastern Orthodox theologian at an evangelical institution, Nasif is able to communicate the nuances and particulars of the Orthodox faith in the evangelical language I am more accustomed to reading, thinking, and writing.

Nasif makes the crucial point that:

When practiced in humility, ascetic rigor results in greater love. The monks fasted because they were hungry to love God more; they prayed because they wanted closer communion with God and neighbor; they contemplated so they could better fix their gaze on their divine spouse; they practiced silence because they wanted to hear God so they could speak and act more wisely to the people around them. The end goal of every spiritual practice employed by the monks was love.

When I searched my heart to learn why I have begun to immerse myself in spiritual practices, I realized that I had done so to become "closer to God." This is a good thing, and indeed a part of "loving God," but they are not synonyms. Closeness is a part of Love, but Love is far greater than Closeness. Love is the "greatest of these," as Paul writes, and so it should be the reason why I pray, read, meditate, fellowship, work and live.

So now I have begun to question myself as I pray and read about my motivation. I am beginning to learn how to define "love" of God not by my works or actions how they form relationship and closeness. It is circular to a point---but love is selfless---closeness is selfish in a way, it fills a need.

As I learn to love more in my spiritual practice I fear I must learn how to sacrifice myself and my own "closeness" and delve into the dark places of my heart and of the world---places I do not even know how to find yet. Nasif comments:

Our resolve to fashion the old creation into the new is weak today because most of us trick ourselves into thinking that our wayward humanity is par for the course. We take "the flesh" in stride and learn to live in peaceful coexistence with its darkening presence. But the words of Jesus would not permit these desert folk to indulge in that delusion. Furthermore, Jesus' words became a call to arms not just to rein in the flesh, but to transform the heart as well: "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander" (Matt. 15:19).

It's easy to let our desire for closeness eclipse God's desire for love. Only when we begin to walk the way of love do we stop tricking ourselves and remove the shadows of our lives through a life of devotion---and I mean life chronologically and not as a mode of doing things, for the desert Fathers and Mothers, as they were on their death beds, would confess, "I'm only a beginner."

I pray I become a beginner.