the gift of hunger
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freder1ck
Posts: 44 Member
It has taken me some time to realize that hunger is a gift. When I began here about 6 months ago I noticed that appetite wasn't causing me to overeat because I ate when I'm not hungry. Over time I realized that I was eating to stop up the hunger.
Below is a quote that I've found helpful. I also put it on my profile…
"We should note here that the goal of the human question is pursued with the means available, with 'what one is.' We can therefore observe two factors of human dynamism as determined by the Christian heritage: instinct and consciousness.
a) Instinct. This is what I find 'already there,' what determines, attracts, stimulates me. It is precisely by this that man is introduced to service to reality, by a whole series of data which he cannot avoid.
b) Consciousness. This attraction, this stimulus, this contingent impulse all have an end. Therefore, the second factor is consciousness of the proper end of this bundle of instinctiveness. For not only does human nature possess, as a factor of its dynamism, a sense of urgency, it is also aware of the aim of this same urgency. This is to say that man, unlike animals and other things, is conscious of the relationship connecting his emerging instinct and the whole order of things.
Ordering one's instinct towards the goal (which is to say, the whole) is the fundamental gift of self to the whole, the so-called 'duty,' whose essence, then, cannot be but love, which is self-surrender.
[...]
But giving oneself is not human unless it is to a person. Loving is only human if one loves a person…"
Msgr Luigi Giussani, At the Origin of the Christian Claim, 94
Below is a quote that I've found helpful. I also put it on my profile…
"We should note here that the goal of the human question is pursued with the means available, with 'what one is.' We can therefore observe two factors of human dynamism as determined by the Christian heritage: instinct and consciousness.
a) Instinct. This is what I find 'already there,' what determines, attracts, stimulates me. It is precisely by this that man is introduced to service to reality, by a whole series of data which he cannot avoid.
b) Consciousness. This attraction, this stimulus, this contingent impulse all have an end. Therefore, the second factor is consciousness of the proper end of this bundle of instinctiveness. For not only does human nature possess, as a factor of its dynamism, a sense of urgency, it is also aware of the aim of this same urgency. This is to say that man, unlike animals and other things, is conscious of the relationship connecting his emerging instinct and the whole order of things.
Ordering one's instinct towards the goal (which is to say, the whole) is the fundamental gift of self to the whole, the so-called 'duty,' whose essence, then, cannot be but love, which is self-surrender.
[...]
But giving oneself is not human unless it is to a person. Loving is only human if one loves a person…"
Msgr Luigi Giussani, At the Origin of the Christian Claim, 94
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Thanks for your post. "You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You" ~St. Augustine.0
