Last week, Gillian and I recorded a conversation about worship and healing as part of the monthly GoHealth podcast. Much of the conversation focused on how every service of worship is already a service of healing (even if it doesn’t have the traditional laying of hands associated with ‘healing services’). Worship is a time of being reconciled to God, one another and creation; where we can discern who God made and meant us to be. A place to flourish and to discover what Jesus meant when he said he came to give life “in all its fullness”.
Afterwards I found myself holding a question: how do we experience this healing when worship is leaving us feeling a bit “meh” – when it seems that worship is happening around us but not really connecting inwardly? Is that a problem? If yes, how can we fix it? Do we just wait it out? How active should our waiting be?
I remember a time when I was convinced that either I had abandoned God or God had abandoned me. Worship felt like a burden, sermons were as dry as sand, bible stories sounded irrelevant and bizarre, prayer felt almost impossible. On the rare occasions I managed to pray, I would drift into a kind of half-hearted effort and give up quickly. However, this period of desolation (also sometimes called ‘disconsolation’) was actually a formative spiritual event in my life and I grew because of it.
But what I am interested in here is the more common and less dramatic moments of disinterest, rather than a full season of disconsolation. Those seasons of the spirit that are a bit driech – rather than stormy, where nothing is wrong exactly, but nothing is connecting either, especially in worship. Less a “cold winter” of the soul and more a “slightly cloudy with a chance of rain” of the soul.
These are the times when I go through the motions in prayer or worship, but little is speaking to me, or when the hymns feel fine but nothing more (or less) than fine. In those moments I can feel more like a spectator than a participant, sitting in worship, but not quite in it.
It can feel like nothing is happening. And it is in those times I try to recall my spiritual director saying, “Well, tell me about the nothing…”
This question (very wise, but a little annoying) is an invitation to look a little deeper, to slow down and try to get a sense of the type of nothing. Is it an empty nothing, stoking my impatience? Is it a silent one, frustrating me as I await an answer? Is it a boring nothing, nudging me to be a bit more creative? Something else? What is the nothing and what lies within it waiting to be seen? This spirit of enquiry takes me from “nothing is happening” to “something is happening and I just had not noticed it.” It is like Jacob waking from his dream and saying, “surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.”
I am not looking for a problem to fix. That rarely helps here and tends to distract me or add to the disconnection. Instead, I gently look at the nothing to see what is really there – hiding in plain sight. I avoid giving myself a hard time and try not to immediately assume something is wrong with me or what I’m doing. I remind myself that God is always there, so maybe something is making it a bit harder to notice that.
And this is where the shift begins. Once I get curious, I start looking and then I start noticing. From there I stop being a passive observer of this “nothing happening in worship” feeling and begin to take part again.
This moves me towards being more alert and attentive to what is going on around me and within me. It shifts me into a more active and engaged mode and that is often when things start moving again for me.
Some energy and effort are often required, moving from “meh” to reconnecting with this healing sense of worship we blethered about in the podcast, often begins with attention, curiosity and noticing. These small movements lift me out of the rut and draw me back towards the fullness of life that God is already offering.
A full participant in the healing journey, rediscovering whom God has made and meant me to be.