SPIRITUAL BOGS
Spiritual Bogs affect all of us at one time or another and they usually happen more than once our lives. It does not matter what path we are on or what faith we follow. One day we find ourselves not moving, not growing in spirit. We’re properly stuck in the mud and we aren’t moving. We’ve become spiritually dry, desolate, a shell of the vibrant person we could be. We may not even realize it at first. You just know that you’re comfortable – almost too comfortable. Nothing is really happening.
Remember this: (If you’re a baseball fan this should be easy!): RBIS – Recognition is the Beginning of Initiation and Self-Actualization. I got this formula from an article I read years ago and it just stuck with me.
Now that you recognize it, you need to figure out how it happened. It usually happens to most of us when we’ve spent too much time embedded in doctrine and dead letters, internet and committees, functions and foundations - and not enough time out in nature, not enough time with our friends and families, not enough time just being and letting God be. We need to let go and let God do what needs to be done.
Maybe it is time to temporarily set aside or to change up that routine sacred text or ritual and try something else – because the same old routine has become a heavy stone around your neck and it is no longer serving you, much less God. I’m not saying to give up your sacred text, far from it. I’m simply saying that God put so much into your life so surely you can try something else for inspiration for a while. It helps to take a vacation to get yourself unstuck.
Once you get moving again the key is to keep moving – and don’t feel guilty about it. Nothing puts you back into a spiritual bog like good old guilt. The key to motion is to put yourself into the stream of life and let it lead you, accepting where it takes you with grace. Know too that you do have a say in the matter; the stream is listening. The stream knows better how to get where it is going and how the currents run than you do.
It is when we fight flow that we put ourselves back in the bog.
Rev. K Hyler DD
KH 1-4-13