Through His Spirit

The muse returned!

But not after a struggle. I settled down to work on Book 3 of my Burton's Farm series (books 1 and 2 hot off the press now!) Then I got a notice on my phone. My storage was full and terrible things would happen if I didn't manage my storage right away. I called Apple Care to help me. Four hours later, they had not solved my problems. I went to the Apple Store. I waited 2 hours, and then gave up. The Apple Geniuses were in hot demand.

A whole day wasted, and I so wanted to get back to writing. Ideas tumbled in my head. One final call to Apple Care, the situation was lassoed under control, and I opened Book 3 manuscript. It was as though the fictional world I had created came alive. I was living the story for the next two hours. I could have written forever.

This is called being in the zone. It doesn't happen often enough. It is when all self-consciousness flees and the floodgates of one's essence are wide open. There is nothing like it, the powerful feeling of utter oneness with whatever one is tackling. It is hard to describe, but it is as though boundaries between self and the universe dissolve. Anything is possible.

There is a spiritual parallel. When one is in such deep communion with God that all sense of separation of God's will and one's own will blurs, heaven feels real. Self is completely unobserved, unimportant, unremembered... and strangely, that is when one is most fully who one was designed to be.

What is most frustrating is it is hard to manufacture that moment, though in the spiritual life, I come closest when engaged in daily, fervent, intentional prayer. The other frustration is it is also hard to maintain.

I wrote the bulk of this blog last night, and this morning, read my daily dose of CS Lewis. Strangely, he addressed a very similar thought. I will conclude with his beautiful words:

When I attempted . . . . to describe our spiritual longings, I was omitting one of their most curious characteristics. We usually notice it just as the moment of vision dies away, as the music ends, or as the land- scape loses the celestial light. . . . . For a few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world. Now we wake to find that it is no such thing. We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face was turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance. We may go when we please, we may stay if we can: “Nobody marks us.” A scientist may reply that since most of the things we call beautiful are inanimate, it is not very surprising that they take no notice of us. That, of course, is true. It is not the physical objects that I am speaking of, but that indescribable something of which they become for a moment the messengers. And part of the bitterness which mixes with the sweetness of that message is due to the fact that it so seldom seems to be a message intended for us, but rather something we have overheard. By bitterness I mean pain, not resentment. We should hardly dare to ask that any notice be taken of ourselves. But we pine. The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret. And surely, from this point of view, the promise of glory, in the sense described, becomes highly relevant to our deep desire. For glory means good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgement, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last.
From The Weight of Glory
Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

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Romans 8:11 

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.