I have one
Career goal—
To have the ideal
Career goal.
It doesn’t
Pay much.

I excel at not making friends. Really, I'm exceptional at it. If you'd like a role-model in not making friends, I'm your man. This null-success is my bread and butter. Self-published instructional pamphlet forthcoming.

The toil of mankind,
The sweat, the cash, the prestige
Or a cold, wet, drink

Are you there, Father?

.I’m here

I can’t see you.

.No, you can’t

I need to feel that you’re there.

.Take my hand, and you will

Photo by Carolyn V on Unsplash, altered by me.

Edit: last line was “.Believe that I am, and you will”

Black Saturday, 2019.

Woke up at 11 thinking of nocturia and prostate cancer. Peed. Cleaned up Fitz because we forgot to put a diaper on him. He liked the warmth of the bath water, and he’s sleeping on the couch’s mattress on the floor in my room now. Stayed awake thinking of nocturia, prostate cancer, death, and my utter lack of meaningful production. I want to do something meaningful before I die. “But what about your kids?” I say. What could be more meaningful to them? And I find that my meaning has little to do with what’s really meaningful, for I am a man of golden blessings, and I think again about death. Whether good or not, I’m of no use but consumption. And so I got up to consume toast and tea and a book or two.

“I prayed to him in Rome,” I said. “It was like calling down an empty well.”
Said Gillian, “Could it be it’s he instead that’s calling you?”
I said, “But silence has no voice to call.”
“The voice of silence calls, ‘Be still and hear,’ poor dunce,” said she. “The empty well within your heart calls to. It says, ‘Be full.’”
“Oh Gillian, I thirst, I thirst,” I said.
“Then drink your fill, old bear!” she cried, and dowsed my head so deep into the pond that when I dredged it up again, my beard was green with weeds, and she was gone.

Buechner, Godric, (1980), 70.

Would that I’d think of writing, and any creative act—even parenting—as cosmos from chaos, as incarnational love, as a gift from God and a Second Adamic privilege, as a participation in God’s very creation, and not as what I would normally consider meaningful. But the thinking is as much a grace as the cosmos-ing, and I am left with my thoughts of nocturia and consumption. I thirst, I thirst. Would that I would drink, but I am as much the bear as Godric.

And so Christ is glorified in the depth of his forgiveness and in the imputation of his very righteousness to one such as me. And all is as it should be. For if my going to hell were to bring him honor, should it not be? Though he is of love, and I question whether that is ever quenched. And so if my suffering brings him honor, should it not be? Would that I believed that—it’s surely the right thing to believe. It’s just the believing that’s impossible. And so Christ is honored again in my disbelief.

“Be still and hear,” she says. But how can a man be still, how can he hear, but by being made to? How can he drink but by a push?

Satan tells us our own Easter is found here, now, and in work. The Apostles tell us it’s already here but not yet, and so we wait for Christ’s return. It’s hard to remember that we’re still in the climax of our own story. Unless he comes back before our deaths, we won’t see the resolution until resurrection.

2:12 A.M., and I still haven’t stilled to listen.

The flowers I pick
Die in my hand,
But flowers I can’t
But pick.

Photo’s my own.

Awake. Bladder. Keep the eyes slitted to suggest to brain I’m not awake yet. Think as little as possible. Frankenstein-movement to suggest to brain still very sleepy. Pee. Back under quilt. Duvet because it’s cold now. Sleep.

I said sleep.

I just had a moment where I thought, “If I’m not a writer, am I anything?” meaning “anything of value.” I have an attachment to being a writer, or being a something, and attaining my idea of life. If I am not a writer, a thinker, an artist, a good father, someone who can control his addictions and his time, someone who can think without worry, who can find what he “should do,” who can understand, who has some unique skill or calling or benefit, who succeeds and is known for it, who doesn’t care about success or praise, who has useful and profound and beautiful thoughts, who hasn’t been found out as a failure in all these things—

Give us this day our daily bread.

I was taught that this refers to what we need to learn. But isn’t it what we need in order to live? Not bread alone but every word of God’s, and Christ, himself, fully embodying and revealing that Word. But surely this also includes

wait for it

bread.

Sustenance, air, water, clothing, friends and family: whatever we need, as determined by God, just like the birds and the flowers, who don’t have storehouses or barns. At every moment, they depend on God’s provision (or withholding).

How different is modern American security? We idealize careers, we develop our CVs, we invest. All cultures sell their own flavors, but we sell Independence. “Need no one.”

But don’t go off to the woods just yet. Our assumptions need changing. Give us today whatever we need—food, friendship, capacity for love, ability to learn from our mistakes, changed assumptions…

Don’t we depend even in those things that secure us? Investments require stable markets. Careers require healthy minds and bodies. Commutes require that the gravitational forces that keep our tires upon the ground remain constant. We depend upon a sovereign and graceful God, who holds all things together.

And after praying for our bread, do we believe that he’ll give it and that, after the day’s provisions, we can say, “We received what we needed?” Do we depend even for that? Don’t we? Doesn’t Christ provide all things for life and godliness, so that all provision has as its core the death and resurrection of God? And while we were still sinners, did he not already give it?

Indeed he did. Give us this day our daily bread.

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash