On Having Nothing To Say...

I really want to write something. Something dazzling. Something profound. Something even half-way decent. And I can't even summon the energy to be half-way entertaining. The fingers are willing to type, but the wit--she is gone. Where oh where is the creative muse? The Beatrice to my little Dante of a mind?

I'm not a new-agey type woman. While I consider myself someone who believes in the mystical, I'm more of a pragmatist. I don't sip a lot of green teas, preferring mine in the caffeinated form. I can't tell you the perfect herbal concoction for your bunion problem, although I can give you directions to a nice natural food store in North Manchester where they'd probably have the answer to your intimate foot issue. I don't align my chakras, nor do I balance crystals on my solar plexus. I don't believe in colonics to purify one's karmic power, nor do I find Tarot readings especially ominous. All in all, I'm sort of a rational girl. I'd sort of like to believe all this kind of stuff, but my brain always says, "Ah...I don't buy it."

But...(you knew there was a but here didn't you), today as I was leaving church (the 11:15 service, which is a reach for me...far different from my traditional 9:00 service with the white haired gang, as I affectionately call them...the ones who like their hymns acapella the way God intended, and who don't go for this happy-clappy new-fangled madness known as "Contemporary" [and having said all that I confess to sort of clapping a long a little in the second service but I did not sway, there was definitely no swaying as that might be seen as a little too praisey for me]) I stopped to talk to Deanna, one of the pastors and dear friend of mine. We chatted about this and that. She expressed surprise at seeing me at the 11:15 service as she knows I'm not a happy-clappy kind of girl, and I said, "I was just so tired I couldn't get up this morning!" And then I recalled that I had gone to bed at 9:30 the night before and had, get this friends, 12 hours of pure, unadulterated sleep. I said to Deanna, "I just don't get it. It's weird." And she said, "Well, Christen, you've recently grieved the loss of two grandmothers, and well, look at the work you do?" Hmmm...yeah...I can see it....

So, I'm thinking. I'm thinking that perhaps there is a psychic energy (I know, I know, I cringe even as I type it) which drains us when we're around grief. Perhaps that old adage about a grief shared is a grief halved has some truth to it. Perhaps that is what Jesus knew when he spoke of being aware of what it meant to drink of the cup.

Regardless, I pick up the chalice and drink anew each morning. But I also need to remember to allow it to be filled by One who offers more abundance and grace than my humanity can muster.

And, having said that, I'm off to bed. It is, after all getting close to 8:00.