Spiritual Harvest – Letting the Soul Grow into Itself

I’ve noticed a funny thing about myself lately. It finally jelled as to what was happening. Over the last 10-15 years I have become an avid bibliophile, reading spiritual works with an insatiable appetite. I was hungry for deep soul-feeding knowledge. I remember being aghast when I entered into a nine month spiritual retreat (The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius) and was told by my retreat director that I was to abstain from spiritual reading, except for the Bible, for the duration of the retreat! I knew that the withdrawal would be painful, but I agreed to the conditions none the less. Shortly thereafter, I came to realize that this was a very wise suggestion for me as I came to understand that when I was experiencing difficulty in prayer (resistance or dryness) this was when I was most likely to abandon my prayer and pick up a spiritual book. I was living vicariously through someone else’s spiritual experiences and these always seemed so much more interesting than my own.

Five years later, oddly enough, I am now at a point where I have little interest in spiritual reading. Actually, it is as if I have an inability to concentrate on spiritual books; I am sated to over-full with taking in new ideas. While I still relish a good mystery or science fiction novel, the only spiritual material I can absorb is poetry, which until recently I never seemed to understand. I was reluctant acknowledge this gradual change; in the back of my mind I had the gnawing fear that I was entering into early onset of Alzheimer’s disease. I described it to my friends as a feeling of “losing my edge” or mental acuity.

I have recently completed a 10 day silent meditation retreat where I abstained from most of my normal stimulation inputs – talking, cell phones, email, books and music. This time was replaced with wordless centering prayer, spiritual direction sessions, liturgy and nature walks. I learned that the usual white noise of life can cause unnoticed sensory overload, which greatly inhibits the process of settling into oneself.

It also became clear to me that I am in a season of harvest. I have spent years plowing, tilling, planting, fertilizing and weeding my soul. Now it is time to let my inner most depths ripen to fruition. I need silence – the silence of books, conversations, and thoughts in order to allow my soul to grow into itself. Although spiritual companions are invaluable guides, this allowing of my soul to grow into itself is a solitary journey inward, as only God has the ultimate ability to coax me to completion.

P.S. My aversion to spiritual reading has increased, but not my attraction to buying books. I keep buying books, knowing that someday I’ll enter back into the feeding mode of the spiritual lifecycle.