The Soul of Desire: Discovering the Neuroscience of Longing, Beauty, and Community

THE SOUL OF DESIRE: Discovering the Neuroscience of Longing, Beauty, and Community by Curt Thompson. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2021. 238 pages. Hardcover; $27.00. ISBN: 1514002108. *The Soul of Desire sparks the reader's curiosity with the title. Often we relate desire to things we want but view as shameful or dysfunctional in life, such as sex, money and power. Although briefly addressing those things, this book takes the reader to a deeper level of understanding and applying God's definition of desire. Thompson uses art and personal narratives with the integration of theology, psychology, psychiatry and interpersonal neurobiology to help the reader see God's intent for beauty out of brokenness. *The first section of the book outlines the concept of desire. Thompson defines desires as what we want and long for. It is primal for humans to desire although we often don't understand why. It is innate but also must be cultivated and pruned. It is shaped by the practices and habits we develop: the expressions of our intention. Often our desires have less to do with what God longs for us to desire, himself, and more to do with being able to compete in the world--to be adequate and acceptable in the eyes of others (p. 13). He goes on to emphasize Jesus's interest in our desires. Jesus asks us to name our desires in John 1:38, "What do you want?" He argues that, often, we do not name our desires because we fear they may fall outside of the boundary of what God or others see as acceptable. But in not naming our desires, we become bored and depressed (p. 191). We are not living to our full potential. *God's intent is for beauty out of brokenness which we are able to see only when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable. How the brain processes interactions is based on past experiences, which often include trauma and shame. In Thompson's first book, The Soul of Shame, he unpacks this concept of shame and how it affects every aspect of our personal and vocational endeavors. It seeks to destroy our identity in Christ. Within this second book, he goes on to elaborate how beauty begins and ends with God, our relationship with God, and with each other. Our primal desire is not only to be known, but also to be curators and creators of beauty (p. 33). He emphasizes that in order to do this, we must learn to think of our story in a different way. God does not point out our sin merely in order to forgive us so we will go to heaven, nor does he identify our trauma and