Thoughts on Dryness

I've been feeling "dry" lately.  I should be excited about Easter, I should be impassioned about my beliefs, but I'm not.  I feel... tired.  Weary.  In need of a long holiday.  Or as Bilbo Baggins said, "I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter, scraped over too much bread."

I've been studying the Old Testament - specifically the Psalms - and how the Jewish people weren't afraid to speak lament or vengeance or maybe even "dryness" to God.  They expressed their emotions fully and expected God to answer.

What happened to us?  Why do "modern Christians" deny the pain, grief and (sometimes) dryness of life, throw Romans 8:28 at each other like bandages or bumper stickers and then expect that to cure everything until our next scheduled "maintenance"?

"It is not a time in which I experience a special closeness to God; it is not a period of serious attentiveness to the divine mysteries.  I wish it were! On the contrary, it is full of distractions, inner restlessness, sleepiness, confusion, and boredom. It seldom, if ever, pleases my senses. But the simple fact of being for one hour in the presence of the Lord and of showing him all that I feel, think, sense and experience, without trying to hide anything, must please him. Somehow, somewhere, I know that he loves me, even though I do not feel that love as I can feel a human embrace, even though I do not hear a voice as I hear human words of consolation, even though I do not see a smile, as I can see in a human face. Still God speaks to me, looks at me, and embraces me there, where I am still unable to notice it." - Henri Nouwen