The Greatest Longing: Christian Poetry of the Sacred

By Alan Altany, Ph.D.

Of the tens of billions of humans who have ever lived, what has been their "greatest longing"? Beyond immediate gratification of transient desires, what have we most yearned for in our lives? What is our fundamental soul-ache, our most profound and simple need? Happiness? Peace? Power? Meaning? Purpose? Love? Belonging? Significance? Bliss?

The Greatest Longing is an opportunity, through poetry of the sacred, to consider the strangely odd and radical claims of Christian faith that God is "pazzo de'Amore," crazy and madly in love with each human person who has ever existed, past and present, and what such divine compassion means for our lives now, and our destinies forever. It is in the infinite ocean of God's love that we ask the great questions.

Poetry can be a call to our sacred roots and values, our experience of epiphanies in the experiences of everyday, "ordinary" living. The Greatest Longing is a collection that affirms that truth, the good, beauty, and love are sacred, godly, and real beyond the "tyranny of relativism," de facto atheism and its dogmatic materialism, and the ideologies of nihilism of this age. Poetry of the sacred is a call and reminder that we are both dust and divinized beings all the days of our lives, beings with transient desires, but with an ultimate yearning, the greatest longing possible.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798350911220

Book preview

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Copyright © 2023, Alan Altany, Ph.D.

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ISBN: 979-8-35091-121-3 (print)

ISBN: 979-8-35091-122-07 (eBook)

Contents

Preface

The Holy Yearning

Beauty of the Flawed

Septuagenarian Blues

Blessed Uselessness

The Story

Meditations

God

Meditations

God’s Madness (1)

Meditations

God’s Madness (2)

Meditations

God Loves Atheists

Meditations

Jesus

Meditations

Mother Mary

Meditations

Love

Meditations

Imagination

Meditations

Abortion

Meditations

Faces

Meditations

Death

Meditations

Sobriety

Meditations

De Profundis

Meditations

Wisdom

Meditations

Distractions (2)

Meditations

Panic & Anxiety

Meditations

Dementia

Meditations

Sunday Afternoons

Meditations

Wabi – Sabi

Meditations

Old Age (2)

Meditations

Mysticism of Old Age

Aging With God: #1

Aging With God: #5

Desert Dwelling

Homo Sanguinis

Homo Absurdus

Homo Poetica

Homo Ridens

Homo Religiosus

Homo Mysticus

Homo Technologicus

Fire

Prayer of Doubt

Prayer of Addiction

Prayer of Love

Prayer of Aging

Human Being

7 Birds

Addiction #1

Hell Revisited

Addiction #2

A Corrupted Pilgrimage

Addiction #3

Imperfect Perfection

Addiction #4

An Alcoholic’s Prayer

Cross

+

Awfully Good Friday

Holy Despair

Easter In Extremis

Melancholic Joy

Such a Jew

Eucharist

Man at Prayer

Anonymous Monks

Awful Learning

Stunned Surprise

When the Past is Long

Recapitulation

When the Past is Long

An Oceanic Breath

When the Past is Long

Tumult at the Cemetery

Conception

Gloria Dei homo vivens

Longing for the Infinite, Finding the Finite

Humdrum and Holy

Friday Morning in Eternity

A Gust of Melancholy

Disappointment With God

Right Through Hell

Ordeal

Fr. John, Christian Martyr

Swallowed By Time

Notes From Underwater: 2

Septuagenarian Memoirs No. 1

Septuagenarian Memoirs No. 5

Septuagenarian Memoirs No. 7

Septuagenarian Memoirs No. 9

Septuagenarian Memoirs No. 10

Septuagenarian Memoirs No. 11

Septuagenarian Memoirs No. 14

Septuagenarian Memoirs No. 19

Evil

Aborting God

Expiration of God?

The Abolition of God

If God Exists…

The Really Radical Revolution

Why I am Not an Atheist

Without Love, Where Would You Be Right Now?

Orange and Yellow

A Conceiving Conception

Audacious Constraints

Being Human

Embarrassing

Descent of Paul

The Beggar’s Bowl

High School Reunion Spiritual Blues

Holy Dust

Field of Poppies

Pummeled

The Yearning

This Preposterous Story

A Palpable Love

Untitled, 1957

What a Body

The Yearning (2)

Ode to the Dogs

Retrieved

Gray Twilight Zone

Wizened Dignity

An Old Poet

Wabi-Sabi: #2

Forgotten and Forsaken Beauty

Disappearing

Poetics of Love or Poison

Seventy-Seven Years

Grandpa Altany

Descendants

Aging With God: #9

Aging With God: #10

Aging With God: #11

The Greatest Longing

Preface

What is your greatest longing? Have you ever deeply listened to your blood and bones, mind, imagination, and soul as to what you yearn for most of all? Have you ever been still and silent enough in God’s presence to know what He most longs to give to you? Would our greatest longing, whether we are conscious of it or not, be what God’s greatest longing is for us?

This volume of poetry, The Greatest Longing, touches upon the human ache, yearning, and quest for the sacred seen as the convergence of our longing and God’s relentless desire to give us what we most want and need. The word, epiphany, will be found in some of the poems with the sacred or divine totally hidden and totally obvious simultaneously. The epiphanies are not nearly as rare as we may think if we can quiet our monkey minds from chatter and swinging from one momentary thought to another.

This poetry was written with the faith, knowledge, and experience that God is wonderfully mad, "pazzo d’Amore (crazy in love") with each one of us, past, present and future. Fully and absurdly so radical a God that He did the impossible and the unimaginable out of infinite love for you and me, He became one of us in Jesus so that we could share in His inner life right now, and eternally. Do we believe it? Look at a crucifix. What if it is really true (which it is)?

I hope this collection of poetry will stir you to great wonder and amazement at cosmic and personal epiphanies of the sacred in your lives. Think of our longing for the sacred and our startled surprise at there being existence or anything at all, time & space, matter & energy, order and purpose in the cosmos, life in any form, let alone human life, consciousness and reason, and the wonders of faith, hope, and, most of all, love. The people who are least bored with life are lovers, those immersed in God’s love for them as experienced in their lives through others, as well as directly and personally with God Himself. In loving we know we are made for God.

"The soul must long for God in order to be set aflame by God’s love; but if the soul cannot yet feel the longing, then it