Dear God,

I’ve picked up Merton again, a book of his letters, The Hidden Ground of Love, in order to make a stumbling attempt to open myself back to you. After a few days of reading, I thought I may as well try to pray again, and if I am to pray, I thought, I may as well write my prayers, since I call myself a writer. And if I’m writing, I may as well put it out in the world, because I’m sick of hiding. Thus, a blog of prayers. The point is not some form of spiritual exhibitionism; I’m neither spiritual nor an exhibitionist. Merton wrote, “the law of all spiritual life is the law of risk and struggle, and possible failure.” As you know — assuming you exist, have a mind of some sort, care and listen to individual persons within the cosmos, speak English, etc. — I have risked nothing as of late, though I’ve struggled. So let this be a risk of some sort.

If I’m honest I find Merton’s thought both utterly attractive and alienating. Take for example how he views the dedication of his order (the Trappists) to Mary, “For my part, I consider that each monastery dwells so to speak surrounded and protected by the maternal love of Mary, and by her prayers in heaven.” I’m struck by the absurd, matter of fact nature of this statement, the lack of critical distance and irony. There’s no hint that this is simply a metaphor. Just the bald claim that Mary is literally praying for his order in heaven. Now I’m aware of the theological rational for this, and I have no problem with it as metaphor, but as a literal reality? I can’t go that far.

I was spit on yesterday. Rob and I were walking on 17th street in downtown (still uptown?) Oakland. A white, homeless looking woman with nappy grey hair and wild eyes, wearing neon green shorts and a blue crop top, and holding a folded blanket walked towards us from the opposite direction. She yelled at two girls walking ahead of us, and I must have looked at her, because as she passed she screamed like a banshee, ran up to me, and sprayed spit between her pursed lips into my face. I was livid. “You crazy fucking bi—” I cut myself off before the bitch. She ran for several yards, yelling inexplicably, then returned to walking when she realized I wasn’t chasing her.

I was distraught. As we walked I wiped my face with my shirt and Rob suggested that I threatened her somehow, reminding her of some inner demon she had yet to exorcise. “She’s possessed,” he said. I wanted to ask if he meant that literally, but instead assumed — to frustrated at that moment to press — that he meant it as some metaphor for the trauma she’d experienced through outside events or internal chemical disfunction or, likely, a mixture of both, since they usually coincide. Rob may have said he didn’t like the distinction, more comfortable in ambiguity when it came to such delicate matters of the psyche. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I wonder if I have the faith to move past the irony of contemporary existence and into some form of belief that would make sense in our contemporary world. That’s the risk, I suppose.