100314 - Reading #4 - pg 26

I have to be honest...I am finding de Sales extremely tough to read.  Don't get me wrong, I can read it, but this passage is thicker then most of my textbooks from University!  After re-reading several times, I have come to the conclusion that readings grab each person differently, this does not grab me  at all! 
That being said, I do like his analogy of the different birds to describe the different stages of spiritual growth.  Very succinct.  The only thing I noticed is there is no mention made of the idea that if someone goes from the ostrich to the eagle, there is no guarantee that they stay an eagle.  He leaves this passage treating devotion not as a journey but as a destination.  Am I the only one that read it this way?  As I said, I had a difficulty with this passage, maybe I missed the whole point of the reading!

What does the nonbeliever see as he or she looks at the life of a devout person? What does the nonbeliever not see?
I think the nonbeliever can’t quite fathom the joy that comes from devotion. It must look like a complete breakdown of the rational mind. We recently had a discussion in our Bible Study about the two aspects of duty and delight in the act of praise. Someone in the group said that she could not understand this sense of duty. It seemed, I think, meaningless or perhaps just unnecessary to her. I am unsure whether or not she was a believer or a nonbeliever, just that she was at a place of questioning, and so I wouldn’t presume to know her position. However, her contribution inspired a great discussion among us that even days later gave me food for thought. For some the act of praise was not a duty, in the sense of a chore, but rather a simple spontaneous joy. For myself, I felt that duty was a way to express gratitude for the delight. It comes naturally and freely. It isn’t like the pulling of teeth. There is no sense of resentment, like when you feel you owe a customary duty such as sending a thank you note. The discussion quickly became a deliberation on the definition of ‘duty’. The word ‘duty’ seemed to carry too much weight. It’s a word that almost automatically links with the word ‘burden’. I am not sure how the conversation would have went had we used the word ‘devotion’ in place of ‘ duty’ but I suspect it would have remained fairly similar in content. I was struck by the difficulty we had describing the joy of ‘duty’ to the member who could not get past a defining of the term. I think this may represent a language barrier between believer and nonbeliever, but also one among believers at differing places on the journey, because sometimes there is a religious sense of a common word that differs from the more common usage; and, I think we become less and less aware of this within the church as we grow into our own faith. The word ‘duty’ is a good example of how a simple word can become overburdened with nuances and uniquely personal meanings. So in answer to what the nonbelieiver sees, I think I would have to say they see an irrationality where the believer sees a concrete rationality. Even among believers there is confusion about what makes a person devout. For me, with devotion it’s as if there is a brick wall that crumbles and falls and this makes the world much larger and much clearer. There is so much more room to roam around in once that wall comes down. I think what the nonbeliever does not see is the brick wall, and thus doesn’t recognize the confinement the wall imposes. A nonbeliever can’t see the liberation that comes through the unfathomable largeness of God’s presence. As I mentioned, even the language of the believer begins to change. For some of us there was something liberating about the word ‘duty’ that we could not explain. It was a bigger word with a wider context than the dictionary definition - less of a burden, more of a gift.