How This Stuff Sometimes Works

I wake up with an unfocused but clear sense of dread which very swiftly turns into pointlessness and waste and could threaten to go disablingly deep. I recognise this kind of thing. It usually, though not always, gets dispersed by my early morning devotions. I reflect that the last time I felt this was on the Sunday when I was doing the talk at the Family Service, and on this occasion it coincides with a Messy Church day - and Messy Church days are always dominated by Messy Church, now matter what else you might or might not be doing. So I try to work out what's causing the ennui - or akedia, speaking spiritually.

Is it simply having many things to do and no time for my own things? Is it having things to do that I find especially taxing, that don't fall neatly within my comfort zone - and dealing with children always means that? Or is it something more significant? The other element that links Messy Church and Family Services is that the stakes are high in each. There's no guarantee how many people will come, and no guarantee that what I've prepared for the services in question will work. It could be fantastic, or it could be disastrous. I realise that the service I like best and get most out of is the little Tuesday morning mass where attendance varies from 3 to 12, and which, because we hold it in an intimate side chapel, works no matter whether you're at the bottom of that range or the top. The atmosphere is always prayerful, quiet, and devoted, and of course it's the mass which you'd have to work quite hard to muck up.

But exactly what do I have invested in the less structured, more risky services? Why do I feel there are high stakes? It occurs to me that I'm deriving too much sense of self-validation from 'success', from getting positive feedback, from numbers ('the sin of multitudinism', as Il Rettore used to call it). I'm resting too much of my sense of achievement on events such as this working. Of course one has to pay attention to what's getting people into a place where they can encounter God and what isn't, but in the nature of churches these things will wax and wane with time.

Every morning I try to read a few Bible verses. This occasion it was the turn of the Third Letter of St John. 'I have no greater joy than this', says the holy apostle, 'to hear that my children are walking in the truth'. It's perfectly right to be thankful and satisfied in a good piece of work, including a sermon, a talk, or a service. But the point of any of them is that they open a space where individual souls can meet God, a far more nebulous business which is not under our control. The only spiritual life which I am directly capable of influencing is mine, and that's a hard enough matter: and, while taking all legitimate satisfaction in doing good work, joy must come from seeing people grow in faith, and self-validation isn't even something I should be considering. Instead the wellspring of who I am needs to be the inner silence where I meet God, nothing else.