E-mail query and reply:

From a friend, last night: 

Been distracted lately as I try to work my way through Center for Action and Contemplation:  Breathing Underwater: Spirituality and the twelve steps.

Came across this in Chapter Two :  Desperate Desiring . . .
"If we are to come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity, then we will come to that belief by developing the capacity for a simple, clear, and uncluttered presence." - Rohr, Richard (2011-09-17). Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps (p. 14). St. Anthony Messenger Press. Kindle Edition. 

Thoughts?

My response at 1 a.m.:

Didn't Oswald Chambers say much the same thing? Whether we call it "focusing on the outflow" or "being more interested in our desired result than in the Person who so desperately loves us that he went to these extremes to simply be with us," it's the same thing. Eventually we need to seek God simply for God's boundless, awesome self rather than for what we want him to do for us.

It's also akin to Matthew Kelly's observation that seeking happiness is a fool's errand.

It's paradoxical. Of course we're looking for evidence of change in ourselves. But keeping our attention on ourselves and our agenda prevents us from simply being with God. Whatever else we want, we must hunger first for God.

Yet that doesn't that mean we shouldn't ask God to work in our life as we wish for him to do. It's just a matter of priorities. If your love for (your wife) were primarily about her care for your home, you'd lose sight of who she really is.

Well, it feels like this next round of antihistamine might be kicking in.  Hope I haven't been too incoherent!

There's some shorthand in there because of our mutual familiarity with the people I was referencing. Oswald Chambers wrote a bunch of sermons that were gathered and edited into a daily devotional, My Utmost for His Highest, which my friend and I used together for a couple years and would frequently reflect on when we got together each week. Matthew Kelly has written several books which we've both read, and my friend and I have heard him speak on a couple occasions. His point that I allude to above is that the more effort we put into seeking our own happiness, the less we do the things that truly lead to happiness.