Writer's Block

I must admit, this has got to be about the twelfth time in the last three weeks that I've sat down at my desk to blog. I've managed to hit the Publish button only one time - on Saint Patrick's Day - and since then I've struggled to write anything. In the meantime, my "writing fingers" have hardly been silent: I've been working on course papers and assignments throughout. But writing something for public consumption has been a much more difficult task.

Perhaps, as I get older, I realize that I don't much feel like sharing all of the little details of my life. These have not been uninteresting weeks, to be sure:

• On our weekly journey to the Costco, our car died which necessitated coasting down a hill into a parking lot, crossing an interstate on foot, and having to call for a Jesuit Search-and-Rescue team to extricate us from the aisles of deals in which we were trapped. 
• The Jesuit Post book has launched. The book has essays contributed from a number of Jesuits and carries two essays from yours truly. 
• I attended Accepted Student day at Boston College's Theology Department in preparation for starting doctoral studies next Fall.
• I finished watching The Borgias and House of Cards on Netflix.
• I've been doing quite a bit of college counseling for former students: heartache over college rejections, helping to choose between good offers. 
• Our RCIA group continues to move along with vigor and we're expectantly and excitedly awaiting the Easter Vigil

Lots of good, or at the very least amusing, things have been happening in my life. More importantly, there have been movements locally and globally that are most worthy of attention, or mention. Yet I've felt neither the competence nor the capacity for offer commentary on these: there are so many voices offering opinions that I often prefer to remain silent. 

Silence, too, marks my own spiritual life. Not a negative silence, mind you, but the silence of Lenten prayer and reflection. Liturgically and spiritually, this is a rather spare season or, at least, I've found it to be such within my heart. I've been in religious life long enough to know that this isn't a crisis of faith but a time in the desert, a spiritual sojourn through which thirst is cultivated and deepened. 

These Spring days, at least, give me hope that winter's grip is loosening. I found this winter particularly biting - very cold, very snowy, and most unrelenting - and I'm yearning for warmer, sunnier days. This morning's sun fills me with great hope that we've turned the meteorological corner and are heading, finally, toward better weather.

I'm chipping away at the writer's block. In a few seconds, I'll Publish and cross my fingers that this will unstop the ice flow so that I can get back to the regular discipline of writing and reflection.