I happened upon a new friend one day last week in a coffee shop. He was reading and I hesitated to interrupt him, but he seemed pleased to have me sit at his table. I noted that he was reading a spiritual book and that became the basis of our conversation. He is a curious fellow, I learned, and he is apt to delve into a wide variety of topics of a spiritual nature. He is into Tai Chi about which I know next to nothing but listening to him, my own curiosity was stirred. I asked him about his practice of reading and prayer and he told me that he will dig deeply for a while, then he will need a break every so often. “Then I will turn to some good novels and read those for a few months,” he said, with a sort of glint in his eye.
I appreciated my new friend’s truth telling. This is my experience, too. Heavy thinking, deep digging, can be wearisome. One person suggested to me that there comes a point in our search for God that we can’t get our brain around where we have brought ourselves. God is too mysterious and too humongous. So, it seems the right thing to do to just admit we are swimming in waters way over our heads and go play in the sand for a while.