October 20th

        Lately I’ve been feeling uninspired.  I’ve noticed this sense of listlessness particularly in prayer.  In religious books, I have run across the term “a dry period” to connote a desert-like time in one’s prayer life.  Is that what I am experi- encing?  The word that comes to my mind is not dryness but emptiness.  The feeling within me seems more like the lonely void of interstellar space.
        The feeling saddens—and frightens—me.  What exactly is going on within me?  One religious writer, Thomas Keating, offers a possible explanation.  Perhaps God has, so to speak, stepped back to encourage me to take a few steps forward.  Like a parent enticing a toddler to walk, God may be inviting me to take a few steps into a deeper relationship, to “take up my pallet and walk.”
        When I read this explanation, a memory stirred—my young son standing upright and wobbling toward me.  His crawling days were over.  What a positive metaphor for transitional times when one way of experiencing life/God/self is giving way to a deeper, hopefully more mature, way of experiencing life/God/self.  Growing out of one stage of life is often accompanied by a sense of loss, of loneliness, of emptiness.  The awareness that new life may be emerging gives me reason to hope.  May it be so.