There are times when I feel imagination has left me, when inspiration has fled, and I am alone in a vast desert where nothing grows. These are the times when it is as if some divine Purpose has forsaken me, when I am left to fend for myself with none of the tools needed for survival. Wandering, wandering, wandering, wandering, I search for something I know not what it is and may not even be sure when I see it. I sit alone in an empty night, I wait for a wind to whisper that I should go on, I am sheltered only by sleep. There is not even longing: longing would mean that my heart desired some thing, but it is that my heart is instead dulled to all sensation. These are the times when pain is welcome, just to feel.
It is in these times when it is hardest to pray. Really, sometimes it is only to prayer where I may go, and it is lost to me in these times my dullness. In moments of gladness, prayers of thanks bubble from me, and in hours of dark, I desperately entreat That higher for an end to my woe, but in times of the dead still — nothing inspires nor begs me to fall to my knees. Neither hope nor despair fills my soul, I have everything I need to live, yet I feel not alive.... Perhaps it is to wait that is all I am to do, that like all things, this shall pass. I can think of no more that I am able, these nows, for nothing may lift me that I know of to try.... (But maybe a quick prayer, too, why not? Just four words: "Move me, Lord. Amen.")
