Nothing to Offer

I thought I’d unraveled to the point I could start putting it all back together, but that was an illusion.  Apparently there is more.  I’m okay.  I’m getting by.  But I’m still unraveling and I hadn't planned for that to be the case and it is messy.  I feel that I have nothing to offer anyone right now, but actually writing it out loud is something.  I was going to say that writing it out loud helps, but it actually just means that the three people who read my blog know about it now. Some things are what they are and have to be dealt with over time and I have to learn to keep going.  I am learning to keep going. 

Oh, and one place I'm going is back to church.

Over a month ago, I started reading the book The Mystery of Christ: The Liturgy as Spiritual Experience by Thomas Keating.  I got up one Sunday morning with plans to visit a local community church, but after reading several sections from Keating's book with my coffee, I changed my mind and decided to visit a church that keeps to the liturgical tradition.

I Googled one I've frequently driven past to find out when their late service started and I went.  I sat in an old pew and I noticed the way the light filters in through the stained glass and I chanted scripture from a prayer book for the first time ever and I listened to the priest blessing, individually, members of the congregation who were celebrating birthdays that week and my eyes welled up with tears.  As new and different as much of it was for me, I felt what I can only describe as a sense of home.  And I experienced a tiny stir of what I think was hope.  I had a fleeting thought that maybe, somehow, I will find a place where I can start putting some things back together and stop feeling so alone in my faith experience.  Maybe.  Somehow.

I still have much to learn and far to go.  At the moment I'm still feeling like I'm empty, like I have nothing to offer.  I honestly have no idea yet if this church is the place for me, but I've gone three of the past four Sundays anyway.  I have no idea how long it will take before I know if I’m doing the right thing, but I’m doing it until I figure out if I am.   

I hate feeling like this and I hate feeling empty and I hate not having anything good to write about or talk about or give... but I think that is the way life is sometimes.  I think, sometimes, the dry spells teach us just as much as the abundance.  I think I need to stop thinking so much and just keep going.