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up late last night, watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; up late this morning, sleeping in till 9:50 a.m., the first time in weeks and weeks. after checking email and facebooking Barbara about flea medicine for Patrick I am drinking tea on the back porch, watching the vines climbing the pillars, thinking about how loving someone teaches you the peculiar language of their beauty, and also about my life, how I woke this morning feeling guilt and dread and asked the LORD to give me hope and purpose and he did. how I didn’t even remember that I’d asked for these until I finally got to the back porch with tea and John and read “whatever you ask in my name, that I will do,” and “if you ask anything in my name, I will do it” and “if you abide in me, and my words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you” (ch.s 14, 15). I wasn’t through-reading; I just stopped there and my eye fell on these like a skipping rock. I think I understand, and I have started asking for things.
if you could ask for whatever you desired (not “wanted,” this is a profound longing we’re discussing, here), and it was promised, what would you ask for? I discover that what I desire is not a job but a fulfilling work, and the ability to pay what I owe. I want my vocation to become my occupation, if not really bringing in money at least sitting in a place of honor at the table of my soul, at least brought out of the chimney it lives in and made a queen like it ought to be, like it will be someday. I want the room in my heart for flourishing new loves. I want forgiveness to clear away scar tissue and all my fear and other adhesions. I want to be able to close all the windows that are letting the wind blow through, scattering papers in eddies and curtains in tangled piles of curtains.
last night at Josh’s house, after hot dogs, beer and watermelon, post-prandial cigarettes, someone said that the sunset we were watching was the same sunset that’s been happening for five thousand years. this in an emotionless tone… this person could look at the mid-morning sky, huge blown cumulus islands with sharpened white edges and the sun crowning, and say the same, but this is new because this day has never existed before, never in five thousand years or ten billion has this day been seen before. never before has anyone lived this day.
you and I, we here, we’re meeting this day with as much honor as we care to give it, it having been given to us to honor us as little gods, walking around feeling defeated and like everything we have ever thought or felt has been thought and felt as many times as a baby has been born on this planet. this morning, having been called by the risen LORD to ask, having been given a day that no-one had seen before 12 a.m. this morning, I’m meeting my desires, meeting the day, meeting the LORD, where I am. which is an unimpressive place, except that it’s in today, which I have not seen before. I think it’s also possible / probable / certain that the woman I am today is a woman I have never been, before. as easily as I imagine that I’ve lived this day fifteen-hundred times already and will live it three thousand more times, I imagine I am the same person as I was last year. and that my habits, the hamster wheel of my disobedience & destructive coping mechanisms, is the same as it’s always been and will always be. not to be histrionic, but not only have I not lived this day before; I have not lived this day before. can I even understand what that means. well, I mean to try.
final thought from Kierkegaard: “So then, go with God to God, continually take that one step more, that single step that even you, who cannot move a limb, are still able to take; that single step, that even the prisoner, who has lost his freedom, even the one in chains, whose feet are not free, is still able to take: and you are committed to the Good. Nobody, not even the greatest that has ever lived, can do more than you” (Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing, 154).
the minute decades of the morning: you are up and washing
your face, you are putting on clothes, you are putting the
kettle on to boil and filling up glass jugs to take out
to water your garden. first the peppers, then the basil,
marigolds (who are making it, even though they got
almost all their leaves eaten down to the spines
the day after I planted them), tomatoes, one after another,
the rosemary. I’ve needed gardens in my life,
I need them, their order from chaos, their sanity
like “the sanity of hedgerows,” everything
in its place or almost in its place, all the different
uses and personalities living together in a small
city of leaves & flowers. because there are roses, too.
and I am the one, I’m the gardener, I take care.
the sun’s coming through every once in a while. the
clouds remind me of my work, first painting in
Fountain City, then looking over grant stuff either here
or at Coffee & Chocolate … or Java … not Remedy, I think.
now Knoxville has so many coffee shops! but I’m thinking
about how I need the nearness of God, how we’re asking Joel
to leave, now, and I’m thinking about where he will go. I’m
thinking about my appointment yesterday with Dr. McDonald,
how I waited for forty minutes and then he came in and was
glad to see me and chatted it up. he talked about Kierkegaard
and how two of his sons are English majors, how he’s
written some. he charged me $20 and didn’t make me get
a pap or CA-125 or ultrasound … this is fabulous … he likes me.
but this is all a mess, and I haven’t even included a hundred
other things, like all I have to do today, like all I have to do in
my life, like I was expecting to get it done today. or tonight while
I’m sleeping, in my dreams. I have such a hard time living
in the present, but God is here in the present moment, “all lit up
in eternal rays,” and I am going to only try to live here,
now. in this moment. with tea, lightly sugared, creamed w/ whole
milk, with the ripest and sweetest and tangiest peach
I’ve ever had in my stomach and not
on that square green plate anymore. it was the best
peach. Jesus, I need.
my branches like those, lifted up on string, the shade reached.
today is a day of decision. today is different than
yesterday, different than tomorrow, and I can be reached
in my unknownnesses. I can be reached by Christ,
and I have to carry with me where I go the knowledge
that He was the one who had the idea to compare me
to the branch of a vine, which needed
lifting up, pruning. which I do. today
is a day of decision, also because I’m finishing
Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing, and there’s no
mistaking this, no mistaking K’s grabbing your shoulders
and making you look him in the eye: what are you
going to do, NOW? today? where is He, where is
Christ, except here?
