It’s almost four in the morning and I’m in a comfy chair in the lounge, eating cheese and reading a good book. Good writing clarifies the narrative in my head, and triggers my own writing.
Also, I’ve been resting too much, feeling ill, and all the excess energy has really gone to my head. Insomnia. I love the decadent mania feeling, like I could paint all night . . .
I’m currently reading a modern Christian mystic (although she prefers the word ‘artist’). Christian mystics mostly existed in the Dark Ages, but there are still a number around today, reclaiming the word ‘mystic’ from its New Age influences, and writing about finding the reality of God in everyday life. And I think, “Yes, the days with which I start off being aware of God are the days when everything is right, even if it is wrong.”
Even if I die, I will be just fine.
It’s so easy. To wake up and say “Good morning God.” That’s a prayer. It can start a conversation.
Yet it doesn’t seem easy to make ourselves do this—to pray, or have a quiet time—possibly because the rest of the day is rather self-centered: “I think I’ll go to the supermarket now, and see what catches my eye.”
Everything I do tends to be about efficiency and instant gratification. Prayer is not as immediately rewarding. Prayer is about making God the priority; taking the risk of saying, “What’s up God? What’s on Your mind at the moment?”
My prayers can tend to slip into the “please let such-and-such happen, make it go smoothly, help me do this, keep me and my family from disease and death and pain” phase. While it’s good that I’m praying about what I care about, and I mean it, maybe I’d do better to pray for something a bit more permanent than my immediate comfort.
My own prayer life consists of talking to God all day about what really concerns or pleases me. And smart little comments. He usually returns the smart comments, and I laugh, and my flatmates ask if I’m OK, laughing alone in my room.
It’s not work. And sometimes I even do my morning-God-thing not just to ‘have a good day’.
The cat has just informed me that I, in fact, am sitting in its chair. Perhaps I’ll go fall asleep now. Then again, perhaps not.
- The Black Cloud by Simone Graham
- Darkness Like A Flood by Kristy Drake
- Question-ity by Kathryn McBeath
- Fear and Loathing in the Cinema by Kathryn McBeath
- Man[kind]‘s Best Friend by Stephen Garton
- The Climb by Simone Graham
