Thought for the Week: Being thankful
Curt Gardner contemplates a loss of worship
I am searching for something I have lost or mislaid: I long for a ‘good’ period of worship in which I turn to the God of my younger years. Such occasions have now disappeared; they seem to have slipped through my fingers without me noticing.
Does this loss signal a deterioration or, less likely, an improvement in my spiritual life? Uncertainty and doubts crowd in. Is this loss caused because I have been complacent? Have I made a mistake of thinking that I can be with God without searching for Him? Did I assume that it was easy to access His presence and, therefore, it seemed no longer necessary to make the effort?
Perhaps this loss may not be the result of complacency but a result of my brain cells decaying as I grow older. If so, all I am then left with are fondly held memories that now masquerade as worship. In my book God just is: approaches to silent worship, I note that the loss of the awareness of God is possibly a stage on our spiritual journey. I did not realise that losing my ability to worship could be inevitable, final and irreversible towards the end of my physical journey. If it is, then I am thankful that life to date has been good and immeasurably rich and valuable.
And yet… and yet we are told that we enter the Cloud of Unknowing when we are close to God. We are told that the Spirit is like a wind, unpredictable and uncontrollable (John 3:8). Thomas Merton tells us that God has his own ‘life’ and is not always available to our sensibilities. In addition, we need to appreciate that we cannot have a condition John of the Cross mentions, of being on fire. However, are these reassurances something different?
Perhaps, for me, worship is changing. Being retired, I can devote more time now to living life with a continuing spiritual awareness. This does not result in the occasional spiritual highs of past years but has a steady quality and it is less of a spiritual roller coaster. Perhaps these highs gave me a false impression of being the norm and not having them gives me the wrong impression that I have lost the ability to worship. Perhaps.
Now, at times, there is an unexpected and involuntary tranquillity in my life that is profound. It causes me to cease what I am doing as it covers me, gently, with a fine delicate blanket, holding me in an environment different to that around me. A bond, a warm feeling of love and peace exists but without an awareness of God. When I worship, my awareness is of an inner peace that is real, but without God. But can this, then, be called worship?
Perhaps not all is as bad as it appears. Perhaps I should simply accept and be thankful for what I have and not ask unanswerable questions.
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