Dear God,

“That is all I do. Throw stones in the air, and if somebody yells I know the stone came down.” Merton

I don’t feel like praying today. I don’t feel like writing. I don’t feel like working. At times, I wonder why any of this matters, this senseless spinning about, worrying over my own work and the world, when most of us seem intent on watching the whole thing go up in flames as long as Hollywood still pumps out movies about it. It would probably be best to just sit back and warm myself by the fire, to grab a bag of popcorn and enjoy the show as well.

I suppose I need hope and faith. Merton writes, “there is the fact that God writes straight on crooked lines anyway, all the time, all the time. The lines are crooked enough by now. And we I suppose are what He is writing with, though we can’t see what is being written. And what he writes is not for pease of soul, that is sure…”

If you exist God, I don’t think the crooked lines you write on are reserved to the Church, whatever that name means when capitalized. I think your Spirit is wild and runs with those who are willing to run with you: from the Christians to the pagans, the libertarians to the Reds, the atheists to the Muslims — the lovers of the human spirit and creativity and difference and nature and all that is good in the world in all of our varied forms, at times even the conservatives. I do hope, however, that you are still, somehow, writing. Is this a stupid thing to hope for in a secular age? Is it a childish and foolish thing to believe that Love still seeks to prevail even while we run head long into an apocalypse of our own making? Possibly. But I’ve always preferred the foolishness of the romantic to the sobriety of the realist. Speaking of being sober, I think I’m going for a hike. I’m giving myself a f-cking break, alright.