A Wasteland

Some days are dry.  I sit down, eager to write, but as I still and open up, all I find is sand.  The imagination feels thick, hot.  My mind rubbery.  Has creativity forsaken me?  Just yesterday she was there, covering her mouth as she laughed, whispering secrets to me.  Now she is gone.

Endless sand stretched out.  I am parched.  Alone.  I want to cry out, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me."  And yet I know, God is here, it just creativity that has disappeared.  In the stillness God smiles, a little bemused at my melodrama.  While he doesn't mind, I feel rather embarrassed, awkward, but at least my writing has finally turned to prayer.  Perhaps that was all it was every waiting for.  Perhaps it was for lack of prayer it took the Israelites forty days to cross the barren sand.

Instead of fighting it, grasping at the sand, I let it flow through my fingers, sift in my mind. I smell the hot, dry air around me.  I resign myself to this dry experience, a place of prayer.  If I spent my writing time in prayer, it is easily time well spent, isn't it?  I feel the peace, the quiet, the heat, and wait.

I don't need to wait long.  The voices come.  "You are hungry.  Get up, make some toast.  Those raisin cinnamon bagels you bought yesterday are delicious."  Or "Come now, you have orange juice in the fridge.  A quick drink will make things better."  As I ignore them, they get more insistent.  Phone calls to make, shopping to be done, floors to be vacuumed and dishes to be washed.  They clamor for my attention.

You shall not put the LORD your God to the test.

I smile, raise my hands to the keyboard, and type myself across the rippled sand.