From the breadbox, 1997:
My dear friend,
I was struck by your saying that you awake crying out 'I want to love you, God.' What a heart-cry, and all the more powerful in aridity.
When I'm in spiritual aridity, I sometimes feel as though the 'phone lines' have all suddenly fallen silent and I feel disconnected. Have you ever been speaking with someone on the phone when there's a problem and you can hear the other person perfectly but they can't hear you at all? I think aridity in prayer is a bit like this, only we are the ones who cannot hear the other Person - God, in this case.
I feel sometimes as though I am talking, praying, continually pleading 'hello? Is anyone there? Did You hang up...?' And there seems to be no 'response.' No sense of anyone being there at all. Like all the lines have gone dead, or have been cut.
Faith, I guess, is when we stay on the line even though we have no perception that He IS on the other end. We stay connected nonetheless; we stay connected through the lines of faith. Sometimes we plead for some sign, sometimes we put down the 'phone' to distract ourselves with something else for awhile. But always we come back to speak again and say 'I trust that You are there! I shall proceed as if I were deeply aware of Your presence, a presence I cannot at this moment perceive.'
He is there. He hears me, and He hears you, and I pray that when our faith again comes into the 'light,' we will find that there has been much, much growth in all our seasons of dark.
Nancy
(public domain photo)
