I'm working through a devotional right now that has a lot of writing prompts in it. It's not specifically for writers - it's based on the premise that we are all created to be creators, and it uses a lot of poetry and imagery to probe deeper.
I'm not entirely sure what I think of it yet so I won't tell you the name of it, but the writing prompts have reminded me of something: I used to participate in Five Minute Friday on a fairly regular basis.
A given prompt, a timer set to 5 minutes, and no pressure to edit and produce.
I don't know why I stop doing things that are valuable - I've been playing lots of those broken records over in my mind lately. Today, I'm returning to a good habit with "no expectation of a recurring ritual" as my friend Beth says.
Back to a single word, five minutes, and whatever happens.
We are so big to think we "find" God. Diggers in a desert find gods buried in billions of grains of time which that god has no hold on, time sifted over a buried deity like so much sand.
We try to find God and discern His thoughts while we bathe children and prepare meals for living, being, hungry souls carrying Forever in themselves. We wash the laundry that clothes the temples, and read books to minds that are always thinking God's thoughts after Him.
All the clanging of dishes and buying of food, sustaining life in the midst of a search for God - a treasure buried in us.
In the quiet times we think hard to conjure up an image of God, or god, because when the light cracks through and the day begins, all our time for finding Him will dissipate into dust motes running under the furniture and checklists driving us on.
We find God, alright. One day we all turn around and there He is, in the trail of a life we lived. There He is, in the dirty face and the empty fridge and the shoes by the door again and smack in the center of life.
Turn around.