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I would like to apologize for the scarcity of postings over the past few weeks. It would not be any exaggeration to say that I was passing a "dark night of the soul." It was honestly as if I had gone back 30 years in time. I had very little ambition, very little impetus to contact anyone, and was feeling quite sorry for myself.

After passing under this shadow my eyes were relatively opened to some extent, not unlike the privilege of the vision granted to the "patient" at the end of The Screwtape Letters, meaning the unveiling of Mr. Wormwood, the "junior tempter," who had been literally the source of much torment over the patient's entire lifetime. Being a proper Englishman of course, the patient would not allow himself to have "visions" while yet alive; and at no time did CS Lewis confess to any personal God given visions of hell or its inhabitants. Had either of them done so, of course, there would be instant rejection of a part of the English public as well as Christiandom in general. So it was necessary to create a "convenient fiction" in order to convey the message in a format acceptable to not all, but many, of both kingdoms.

The anti-supernatural biases of our present world, in particular the literary world, matches up with our virtual worship of pseudoscience which of course is becoming increasingly unreliable as one would expect when it deviates from the discovery of truth to mere pragmatism and opportunism. As I said previously, quoting Flannery O'Connor, that the divorce of nature and grace, which I take to mean grace from a supernatural source, makes "art" not only generic copying of the real thing but also exceedingly tedious.

But getting back to the matter of vision: I would like to cut through the detritus to the real deal. Whereas it took my wife to awaken me to an objective vision of what I was becoming-- very unbecoming to me and rather invisible to me in spite of being entirely unpleasant/unwelcome-- it took the Lord Himself to give me a positive verbal answer as to the question, "What are You doing, Lord? Where's the joy I have been experiencing over the past year? What's the purpose of this?" etc. etc.

I was also overwhelmed by the tasks I have had to do recently; so finally I tried to take a nap in the basement during our recent heat wave but was unable to sleep; it occurred to me that, while I had no ambition to do anything else, I might just as well do, "and now for something completely different."

One often hears in Christian Culture the admonition that we need to talk less to God and listen more to Him; except that usually our prayers consist of our opinions of what God should be doing; and true waiting and listening seems to be crowded out by our "You Do" list. Add worry and distrust and Ameri Can Do Sir and we get a picture of the state of the art of prayer. Mea culpa.

So I tried to listen--and really wait for the answer amongst my wandering worries and true exhaustion, and this was the answer:

"I'm trying to comfort you."

Imagine that! The same God who, in the words of His Son, called the Holy Spirit, "Comforter", tells me that He is trying to comfort me! The implication being of course that I am not allowing him to do so.

It took a while for this to sink in, so I am going to close now, in the hopes that this message is not just for me. More later.