I mustered up the courage to go to church again today, and found the right [Protestant] service this time. How do I describe the feeling of peace and contentment that I felt there? It was as if I'd come home, or as if I'd finally eaten a meal after starving myself for a long time. The feeling is tough to describe. A lot of times in Christianity, we talk about spiritual hunger -- about spiritually craving God the way our bodies crave food. It's hard to understand until one experiences that feeling of hunger and then appeasement. People talk about being on spiritual rollercoasters, riding up and down from one retreat to the next, or from one Sunday service to the next. For me, perhaps because I haven't experienced that spiritual high from attending a church retreat in a while, it's been more of a feeling of spiritual starvation. Maybe because I haven't been to church in a while; maybe because I haven't been part of a fellowship in over a year; maybe because I feel like I've wandered off the racetrack, but I've been feeling starved. It's kind of like this empty feeling, a void that nothing can seem to fill. When I'm busy and surrounded by people, I'm happy and perfectly fine, but when I'm alone, this feeling of loneliness creeps in, and I'm hit by a craving for love. Most people, myself included I will confess, will try to satisfy this craving by going out and finding someone for the night, or hanging out with friends, or busying theirselves with work. But it's never enough -- however great the temporary happiness is, it's only temporary, which means that at the end of the day, we're left looking for more. Yet when I went to church today, asides from feeling ashamed for having wandered so far off the path, I felt content, for the first time in a long time.
I didn't do much today after getting back home from church; just took a few hours to finish reading Shantaram. It is a heartbreakingly beautiful book, and I highly recommend it.
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