Dead Mouse ~ Desire

During my undergraduate years i was learning how to fast.  As i progressed, i decided to try fasting and praying for three full days.  i was still attending classes and working during this time.  By the third day my stomach had stopped grumbling and the hunger pains had subsided.  My last class of the day was a mammalogy lab.  We were learning to stuff animals for taxonomic collections.  Our specimen that day was a mouse.

While i was preparing the specimen, something very strange happened.  i cut into the skin of the dead animal, tearing gently to expose the flesh inside.  My eyes widened and my stomach leapt.  All at once i came to the sickening realization that i was hungering for a mouse carcass.  After three days without a scrap of food, my body trembled at the thought of consuming the scrap of meat on the dissecting table in front of me.

i composed myself, left the classroom, drank a ton of water, and returned to finish my task.

C.S. Lewis wrote: “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

i wonder if part of the reason we are too easily pleased can be summed up in what we've been eating.  Too often i have had friends say to me: “Don’t settle”.  Don’t settle?  How do we know we are settling?  How do we know we are settling for a life of fear if we’ve never known peace?  How do we know we are settling for mud pies if we’ve never even heard of the sea?

In that odd moment, i was hungry not so much for the mouse but because the mouse reminded me of meat.  My desires for something better were piqued.

Have you ever looked out at the shimmering horizon of the sea, at the glittering diamonds of freshly fallen snow, at the ghostly mists that rise from a snowy peak?  In those moments, did you ever feel a deep desire for something you couldn't quite put your finger on?  i believe this is the desire for Heaven.  It is good to crave satisfaction, even a satisfaction we cannot verbalize or visualize.  We have never seen eternity, but we were made for it.  So when we catch a whiff of Heaven, our hearts desire it all the more.  This earth is a shadow, a hint of things to come.  We are here eating mice, and there in the Kingdom of Heaven is a great feast awaiting.