Sunday 5 April:

It’s Palm Sunday and I thought I’d reflect on how I’m feeling ‘spiritually’.

The truth is that I’m in a bit of a spiritual wilderness – and this has been the situation for some time now, not just during Lent. There have been moments of encouragement (eg. through Lee’s words at a church service/a recent Resonate or via my wonderful Bloke’s Prayer friends), but these haven’t stopped me feeling almost ‘without faith’ and asking myself why I’m bothering.

I tried, somewhat briefly, re-reading Tom Wright’s “Lent for Everyone: Matthew” (a previous Lent study book)… but found it unhelpful.

Since then, as a daily routine, I’ve been re-reading daily readings and meditations from the Iona Community (“This is the Day”, published 2003)…it covers four months and I’m some three weeks in. I have to say that I find the Iona Community approach/attitudes provide me the best spiritual ‘support’ at present. This week (as I do each Easter Week), I’ll also be re-watching Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” DVD (although, as the years have gone by, I find Christ’s whipping by Roman centurions increasingly repellent).

At times, I feel as if the only reason I call myself a Christian is for the ‘peripheral things’ that come with ‘membership’… friends and a sense of ‘belonging’ etc.

I don’t read my Bible (but will endeavour to use this Holy Week as a vehicle for reminding myself of the Easter story) and I rarely pray (apart from our weekly Bloke’s Prayer sessions). In fact, I feel a bit of a fraud. How can there be a God? What’s the point of praying? What’s the point of worship?

I look at some of my Christian friends and frequently find myself wondering how (and why) these intelligent people have been able to develop and sustain their respective spiritual lives.

In some ways, given what’s happening in the world at the present time, you might have thought it would be relatively easy for me, who calls himself a Christian, to find reasons for prayer or time to pray (afterall, there’s plenty of time available!). Sadly, this hasn’t proved the case for me… I find relatively easy to opt out of such obligations or routines.

I don’t believe there’s ‘life after death’… and I don’t think I ever have subscribed to such a notion. Is there a heaven? Well, I actually do feel there is… but my heaven is much more the ‘heaven here on earth’ concept. Something about it being here, right now, and that it’s about our collective need to actually look for heaven… it’s here all the time and, perhaps for most of us, we just don’t ‘see it’ – we don’t appreciate all the beauty, creativity and humanity that surrounds us. Fundamentally, I think heaven is about kindness and helping others.

But what do I know?

There are lots of times when I think John Lennon got it right nearly fifty years ago in his “Imagine” song from 1971)(image: from my time on Iona in 2012):

Imagine there's no heaven

It's easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people living for today

Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

Imagine all the people living life in peace...