A Healthy Case of Spiritual Materialism

Recently I feel like I've been hung up on trying to figure out how to put holiness into a box more than I ever have before in my life. And not only that, I have wanted to own it, like control it/own it, and possess it as if it were some physical object. And as it is a case of spiritual materialism, the subjects of the books I was purchasing without any real possibility of reading in the near future were contemplation, prayer, the catechism, happiness, faith and of the authorship of a priest well read and with a lot of experience in the topic. It was a real shopping spree - I must have bought a book every two weeks or so, not just online, but in actual stores, too. On top of that, while I would love the titles and ideas behind them, I really don't have time or energy to sit down and read all of these in such a way that would actually benefit me spiritually. I went on buying thinking that within one of these "holy" books I would be able to find a definitive idea or concept that I could just read and become enlightened as to realizing heaven on earth. The other problem was that I was trying to read a book on contemplation already but not actually practicing it at all - which is exactly what one needs to do in order to grow: spend time in prayer with God. In other words, I didn't want to change myself, but God to change for me and to accommodate to my need to put God in a box.

As I understand spiritual materialism, I think this is a good example. It was a feeling and perspective I received that lead me to think that I could find God in a book like that. I mean it would be easy to gain heaven: the physical world defines you and all you need to do is to acquire the right physical objects. I suppose that could lead to an hypothetical analysis of whether or not it would be easy to gain whatever objects they were, but that is not why I'm writing this post. Basically, what I want to say here is that in this state of me becoming a temporary spiritual materialist, I became more and more anxious about feeling like I had done enough for God and done the right things. And through this whole process of buying the books, it just so happened that one of the books would not fit through the mail slot in the door of the row home that I'm residing at for part of the week, and a slip was dropped off to notify me that it would be at the post office waiting for me. One of the days after that, I very quickly made a decision to try to pick up the book from the post office, though the office was closing at 5pm and it was already 4:45pm. Reflecting my own anxious mislead desire for holiness by owning the book on prayer and the desire to fulfill that desire I raced out of my work building and over to the post office, only to get there a minute or two after 5pm and walk up to ask the lady at the door if it was closed. Of course it was. Thus endeth the lesson... for now. It was a great help in revealing where my own desires lay. I was able to get that I didn't really have a good sense of what was necessary to achieve heaven in the here and now, but that I was way off and that the actions I was taking in order to express that misguided notion were only making my thirst for satisfaction and fulfillment worse.

Hopefully I can learn from this lesson and move on to a different way of approaching God and opening up to the Great Mystery that cannot be contained, even in a book on prayer or contemplation.