Fr. Michael Cummins – Word on Fire Blog
Through a nonstop string of advertisements we are being sold the idea that the “full and good life” is about having ever-new and increasingly extreme experiences, whether that be found in jumping off bridges, scaling mountains, abandoning day-in and day-out relationships in order to go explore the world and find oneself, or in kinky (bordering on abusive) shenanigans in the bedroom. Why? My personal hunch is that people conditioned to never be satisfied with the daily and mundane, people conditioned to always be looking for the new and greater experience (like an addict searching for the next “hit”), make far better consumers and will probably spend more than people who are actually content in their lives and in their relationships.
The need for ever-new experiences is a form of addiction, and it is causing great harm in our world today. It is also bleeding into Christian spiritual life, where the journey of faith shifts from growing deeper in relationship with God and others through lives of commitment and faithfulness to having yet another spiritual experience to brandish, almost like another knot in ones belt or a new trophy for a case.
But there is a spiritual corrective. There is beauty and great spiritual vitality in the ordinary. Our Christian faith—through the common and mundane elements of the sacraments (bread, wine, water, oil, words spoken); through the everyday living of community, whether as large as the universal Church or as intimate as the domestic church; through the call of faithful and consistent friendship with the poor and vulnerable; through the continual return to the same Sacred Scripture; through recurring recitation of prayer—witnesses and leads us into this awareness.
There is a depth to the ordinary, and often God is more likely found there than in a never-ending quest for the new spiritual experience.
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I would propose that, in regards to the spiritual life, an addiction to ever new experiences prohibits and impedes the growth of spiritual muscle memory. This is dangerous because when push comes to shove in life, and when pain, confusion, and suffering come along, people will then not have the spiritual muscle memory to fall back on and will then easily get lost, perhaps even irretrievably. We can run from spiritual and emotional high to spiritual and emotional high, but in the long run, by doing so we never develop the ingrained muscle memory needed to remain standing when life gets complicated and when it gets tough.