"So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bankside in autumn." - Henry David Thoreau
Walking outside the city
Walking from my home My usual path Under the hot sun My feet upon the sand
And unto me an apparition did appear
The Ghost of Guadalupe
I'm a man of no importance I'm a man of little means Tasked to build a church
To relieve the burdens of her people
Flowers she did give me
As a sign
The Ghost of Guadalupe
During Advent We are not safe from miracles
Or ghosts Or signs
Even an ordinary man
Walking an ordinary path
The cold has settled in, my candle is burning, and I can hear the 11pm Norfolk Southern way out in the dark, Southwest of where I'm sitting. Today is December 9th, the day where hungry, faithful Catholics celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. I'm going to talk about that in a minute. First I want to tell you about this cup of coffee I'm sipping on. I poured in a little Jameson to give it grip. "Grip" is the best way I can think to describe what whiskey (or bourbon) adds to a cup o' joe. You take a sip and after that hot coffee goes down and you feel the liquor hit the back your throat, you squeeze the mug, your cheeks and jaw tighten, your tongue presses against the roof of your mouth. You swallow it in deep. Satisfaction.
Advent can have that same effect. "Prepare ye the way of the Lord," cried John the Baptist. "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." Translation: Get a grip. On yourself, on your sin, on your bull shit (maybe I like that Jameson a little too much). No one's ever had that Old Time Gospel Repentance without getting a grip. I asked a friend the other day, "Do you love Truth? Can you put the pursuit of Truth above everything else? Above comfort, security? Can you accept the pain that sometimes comes with Truth?" Enneagram Fours (Eric Wolfe) will recognize this as an obvious, fundamental question. Everyone else will think I'm insane or misunderstand what I'm asking.
"If you only knew what darkness I am plunged into," wrote St. Therese, the Little Flower. Here's the thing about the Dark Night of the Soul: when you're in it, it doesn't feel like a "night," the implication being that the sun will rise and "day" will come again. It feels like the end. So when/if it does end, you'll cry and celebrate and dance like you didn't know you could or ever would again. The sun came up on my Dark Night in late 2015. I remember, about that time, sitting in Sunday School, I felt impassioned, hungry for hard truth, reawakened by an "infinite expectation of the dawn." It was a transcendental moment, which has become a not-too-unfamiliar thing for me. I felt a push to "drive life into corner," to live "sturdy and Spartan-like, to put to rout all that was not life," to dispense with identity and ideology and wounds and be burned by holy fire. I sat in my chair, my eyes closed. I wrapped my fingers around the arms, I squeezed them tight. I got a grip.
A peregrino named Ben Camino wrote this during Advent 2013: I’m talking about hope. Clinging. My vocation is to encourage clinging. With bloody fingernails, if need be, with teeth, arms, words, poetry, advent laments, late night arguments, church reform, hearing confession, the bread and wine, visiting the sick, love, especially love.
Hope's never made much sense to me. But if it involves all that, if hope is clinging, if hope is getting a grip, then maybe I'm better at it than I thought. Hope always sounded like holly-jolly propaganda, like a Macy's benediction under tinsel and glitter, but what's the point of all this preparing and repentance if we aren't, at some level, expecting God to come down remind us that life is definitely worth living, and, more than that, that's it's awesome to be alive and, maybe one day, be alive again? That’s got to be hope.
Okay, I've made you wait long enough. The Feast of the Immaculate Conception. I think highly of my readers. I believe you're all well aware that this does not refer to the virginal birth of Jesus, but rather, to Mary's being conceived without inheriting Original Sin. If you didn't know that, then get a grip. Now, because the Eastern Orthodox Church doesn't believe in a genetic or passed down Original Sin, they celebrate the Feast of the Not-Really-Immaculate-But-Still-Impressive Conception. It should be noted that this is not a commentary on Mary's status as All Holy or on her virginity. And this brings me to the point of this completely non-ironic Advent Meditation: St. Agnes of Rome, the patron saint of chastity and virgins (and many, many other things).
The details are fuzzy, but the tradition of the Church holds that St. Agnes was martyred at the age of 12 by Emperor Diocletian. She was a beautiful, wealthy girl and young men came from all over to propose to her, but she turned them down, as she believed that she had a heavenly spouse in Christ. One scorned man turned her into the authorities as a Christian. She was arrested and dragged through the streets naked but miraculously her hair grew long and covered her body. When a mob tried to rape her, the assailants were struck blind and the son of the prefect who condemned her struck dead. The authorities tried to burn her at the stake, but the wood would not catch fire. A soldier then drew his short-sword and stabbed her through the throat. Would that I had a grip on the faith as strong as this little girl.
According to a half-assed Google search, the name Agnes is derived from the Greek name Hagne, meaning pure or holy, and the Anglo-Saxon name Harnish comes from Agnes. For this reason, I can't help but feel a special connection to St. Agnes, even if she couldn't legally drink the coffee I most enjoy. Her feast day is January 21. At the risk of sounding relevant, I dare say that as the patron saint of rape survivors St. Agnes should perhaps be remembered a little more loudly these days. Maybe next year she'll contend for the cover of TIME.
I'm blowing my candle out and heading for bed. Thanks for reading, pilgrims.
The Jackson Browne Vespers Office, The Call to Prayer
Keep a fire burning in your eye Pay attention to the open sky You never know what will be coming down I don't remember losing track of you You were always dancing in and out of view I must've always thought you'd be around Always keeping things real by playing the clown Now you're nowhere to be found
It's another midnight Advent meditation after another miserable game of Madden football. I read once that people need meditation the most precisely when they desire it the least. What I'd really like to do right now is fall asleep, but this is the stuff Advent's made of, fighting off tired eyes, keeping watch when you'd rather not, pushing through the angst, waiting, waiting for the oddly-real frustration of a make-believe video game to dissipate. If this all seems silly, consider: you're playing chess, and you've got a move planned, and you make it, you move your Queen across the board and suddenly, for no reason at all, she stops working and breaks and you lose her. That's what playing Madden football is like. I'm committed to the remainder of this season, but after that, I think I'll not play the game again. When life hands you an easy choice, make it and be grateful, pilgrim. There are hard ones coming down the pike.
Today is December 8th, 2017, and we here in Northeast Indiana received our first snow. Loose flakes swirling in frigid winds, but no accumulation. Tomorrow I'll go to my brother's for some welding. Right now I'm listening to Jackson Browne and thinking about time. Time is a funny thing. Time's been weighing on me heavy. I've lost some people this year. Older folks, but not that old.
Brian had cancer. He fought it for a while, a decade I think, but it finally took him this year. Killed him dead. He stored a Camaro here at the storage facility for years. He told me a couple times that building a garage addition was just too expensive, what with all the permits. His wife called me some weeks after the funeral and came and got it and I cleaned the space out for the next tenant. Unit #813, I think it was. Sometimes during the warm months he'd bring his golf club and practice his swing in the big yard to our east. He'd park his red Ford Ranger and hit wiffle balls. But not anymore.
Ralph died suddenly. Also cancer, I think. It was far along by the time they caught it and he went fast. Couldn't have been more than a month after the diagnosis. I ate breakfast with him quite a bit (and Brian, too) at a big round table with lots of other old, retired Republicans. Ralph was the GOP chair of our county and we disagreed on most things. Ron Paul, Israel-Palestine, police violence, etc. But I enjoyed drinking coffee and listening to the early morning banter. He had an infectious laugh that sort of wheezed and lifted as he smiled and his big body rocked back and forth. It's harder to hear in my mind now than it was a year ago. The Jackson Browne Vespers Office, The Hymn
I don't know what happens when people die Can't seem to grasp it as hard as I try It's like a song playing right in my ear That I can't sing I can't help listening
Remember the last few minutes at the end of The Sandlot when the kids fade away from their old ball diamond and grow up and the narrator tells us what they went on to do? That's what it's like eating at the breakfast table with old men, only it's the exact opposite: they've already done what they came here to do (or perhaps missed their chance) and the fade-out isn't a child growing into an adult, it's an old man going to the grave, returning to the dust. Slowly, one by one, like the ball diamond in the movie, the table gets emptier.
Brian and Ralph are both gone, but I'm still here. When people die, I feel like I'm left waiting. Waiting on something. Waiting on them, maybe. Because if we're not waiting, then they're just gone, and I don't know if that makes sense. Maybe we're waiting on death to take us, too. Or maybe we're waiting on resurrection. I know don't. But we're waiting, and if there's a human being anywhere on this planet whose stuck in The Waiting, then Advent lives. "The waiting is the hardest part," wrote the recently departed Tom Petty. He knows. The Jackson Browne Vespers Office, The Refrain
Keep a fire for the human race And let your prayers go drifting into space You never know will be coming down Perhaps a better world is drawing near And just as easily, it could all disappear Along with whatever meaning you might have found Don't let the uncertainty turn you around (The world keeps turning around and around) Go on and make a joyful sound
I said to a friend tonight that if you've had a painful life, with abuse and suffering and want and trauma, it's easy and natural to look back and mourn that these times ever happened. And if you've had a pleasant life, with friendships and family and celebrations and excitement, it's easy and natural to look back and mourn that these times are past. We've been dealt a losing hands, my friends. The best remedy I've ever found for this predicament is cliche, boring, and profoundly difficult: pay attention. To the subtle things, the nuances, the details. To the people you love, to the planet, to music. Lose yourself in it, when you can.
On October 26, 1853, age 36, Thoreau wrote in his journal, "When, after feeling dissatisfied with my life, I aspire to something better, am more scrupulous, more reserved and continent, as if expecting somewhat, suddenly I find myself full of life as a nut of meat - am overflowing with a quiet, genial mirthfulness." As if expecting somewhat. I heard once or twice or a thousand times someone preach that Advent had something to do with "expectant waiting." Something about "has already come, is coming, and will come again" (I never get that right). Time is a funny thing. So is Advent. So are Advent meditations. I don't have much of a conclusion for you. I'm just trying to make a joyful sound, trying to find some genial mirthfulness here in the middle of the night, with my cat on my lap, my candle burning, and Jackson Browne on the radio. Thanks for reading, pilgrims. I do deeply appreciate each and every one of you who share your limited time on this planet with me by reading these meditations. The Jackson Browne Vespers Office, Closing Into a dancer you have grown From a seed somebody else has thrown Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own And somewhere between the time you arrive and the time you go May lie a reason you were alive but you'll never know
I'm getting yet another late start. This time it's 10:30pm. I've spent the last hour demonstrating remarkably poor time management, doing things like watching a Church league basketbrawl game, and practicing a song for an open mic on Thursday, and fixing drywall, which could easily be done tomorrow or the day after or any time that I'm not supposed to be meditating on all things Advent. And I wouldn't be a "bad time management person" if I hadn't just complained to my therapist today about how I'm terrible with time management. I feel like there ought to be a word for "bad time management person" Maybe an "Edwin." Let's try that again: And I wouldn't be an "Edwin" if I hadn't just complained to my therapist today about how I'm an "Edwin." Oh, yes. That definitely works.
So now, to get with this meditation, I'm smoking (tobacco, for all you miscreants out there) and drinking, but not as much as I did during meditation #1 when I more or less hit "publish" before it was actually finished (I went back and cleaned it up).
I just Googled "time management." I clicked on the first link and it took me to a remarkably uninviting page. Like a house you might walk into and, for some reason, before anyone speaks a word, find that you feel completely unwanted. Maybe there's stacks of clutter, or it's dirty (not messy), or there's strange decor, or children. To my surprise, that link contained an eye-opener: Good time management requires an important shift in focus from activities to results: being busy isn’t the same as being effective. (Ironically, the opposite is often closer to the truth.) What?! Ironically?! Ben Camino has that trademarked! And yet...and yet...I guess that is ironic. I mean, I think it's ironic. Maybe it's only ironic because I'm an Edwin and I have no time management skills and so what's obvious to non-Edwins comes as a surprise to me. Being busy isn't the same as being effective? Bosh. I'm certain that in order to be effective you must be busy. Let's move on. What are the benefits to time management?
Greater productivity and efficiency. Makes sense.
Less stress. I get that.
Better professional reputation.
Hmm. Now I'm suspicious. I spent about an hour today on the phone talking with Eric Wolfe. I don't regret it one bit, but I'm certain it was poor time management and there's not a chance it did a thing for my LinkedIn account. "Better professional reputation." Thoreau would vomit up his carrot and potato garden if he heard a phrase so abhorrent. An appropriate Thoreau quote:
"The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?"
I am certain of it, that Thoreau had scarcely a sense of time, let alone "time management," and the idea that he should learn it for the sake of a "better professional reputation," well, well, it's absurd.
I read a bit in Thoreau's journal just now, a small break from writing, and I discovered this, from Sept. 7, 1854, age 34: "I do not so much wish to know how to economize time as how to spend it."
He goes on: "The scenery, when it is truly seen, reacts on the life of the seer. How to live. How to get the most life. How to extract its honey from the flower of the world. That is my every-day business, I am as busy as a bee about it." AHHH-HAAA!!! To be busy, busy as a bee! In pursuit of the good life, of what is true and beautiful and right! "I ramble over all fields on that errand, and am never so happy as when I feel myself heavy with honey and wax."
He's really rolling with this bee analogy. "I am like a bee searching livelong day for the sweets of nature."
That settles it. I'm going on a run tomorrow. Getting outdoors and searching for life. Too much screen time these days. Too much phone. I want to run down this old weedy railroad track I discovered a few weeks ago. I want to jog around the downtown and run past what old brick is left and see what I can see. I want to smell the grease wafting from the lunchtime kitchens. I want to hear the traffic. I want to feel the concrete under my running shoes and find the rhythm of my breath. I want to hum around this city, paying attention. I was made for this. Some years ago when I really wanted off the grid I bought a 49cc moped, the sort that doesn't require a driver's license, and I'd crawl around town at about 30mph. Life slows down on a moped. You start noticing houses and trees and shapes and colors your eyes never caught before. I've missed that moped now for about 3 years, but since taking up jogging in the summer I've enjoyed getting back to that slow move.
I love a slow move.
Advent is a slow move, when I stop and give it a chance. Advent isn't for the Effective Time Manager With A Better Professional Reputation. Or rather, they aren't for it. I don't think they'd get along. Me, I want to be busy being slow. Last Advent I tried to shut 'er down and take a nap. This year I think I want to start buzzing. Cooking potatoes, cleaning the house, fixing things, lifting things and going on runs, learning new music, drinking new drinks, loving what ought to be loved and hating what ought to be hated. Oh, and I want to read more of this Thoreau journal. I'll fit a nap in at least a few times, no doubt. But tonight I can't stand the thought of letting good honey go to waste. There are new moons, howling wolves, and strange skies out there. "If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being," wrote Emerson. This is Advent. We were made for this. Tonight I am ready to brave this city and this life and this season. Tomorrow I will make my way through my day like a bee, zipping from flower to flower, I will manage my time like a 19 year old manages a Waffle House at 3am. I will be an Edwin.
I'm blowing out this Advent candle for the night and falling asleep with this journal. Be well, pilgrims. Be slow.
The Christmastide Vespers Office for Tuesday of the First Week of Advent, The Hymn O God, creation's secret force, Yourself unmoved, yet motion's source, Who from the morn till evening's ray Through every change does guide this day:
Grant us, when this short life past, The glorious evening that will last; That, by a holy death attained Eternal glory may be gained.
Grant this, O Father ever one With Jesus Christ Your only Son And Holy Ghost, whom all adore, Reigning and blessed forevermore.
Last night I didn't get to sleep until the nearby Norfolk Southern blew its 2am whistle. This morning I woke up hungover and a little high. And today, well, today was an all-around bad day. I feel it, too. Precious frustration. It must be precious for as tight as my mind and body hold onto it. Out of control and out of ideas. Afraid. Nervous. Weak. My cat won't stop squeaking and she's driving me mad. And it's all compounded by the fact that I'm struggling to hit my Advent stride. Is it really Advent? It was 50 degrees today. This can't be Advent. And I can't write. I can't do anything. My self-help books tell me: don't catastrophize. That's the ugliest word I think I've ever read or said.
There's this damnable hole in my wall that I've been trying to patch for close to 3 weeks. Way back when, during a reallybad day, I put it there. I always think about that day when I listen to Jackson Browne's "In the Shape of a Heart." There was a hole left in the wall From some ancient fight About the size of a fist Or something thrown that had missed And there were other holes as well In the house where our nights fell Far too many to repair In the time that we were there
I've ignored that hole since 2014. For a while I covered it with a long scarf that hung from a hat rack. Eventually I stopped using the room and didn't have to look at it. Now I have some plans for the room and so this month I decided, finally, 3 years later, it was time to fix that hole in the wall (which is, indeed, the size of a fist). This hole is a bitch to drywall. It's been impossibly uncooperative. Sanding issues, drying issues, spackling issues, putty issues. Enough issues for multiple hour-long therapy sessions. My girlfriend, after watching me re-spackle the hole for the 4th time, asked if I regretted putting it there. "What even is regret?" I asked. I looked down at all the dust and paint and mess and I shouted, "YES, I REGRET IT."
Why do people punch holes in walls? When we were all much younger, teenagers, my cousin punched his floor. Family shit, I think. He broke his hand. If you have to choose between punching a floor or punching drywall, always go with the drywall. When I was 20 I punched a cheap fake wooden door. The heart controls the fist. The way I see it, you buy drywall putty for two reasons: 1) after a clumsy accident or 2) after a killer heartbreak (and it could be any heartbreak, not necessarily romantic). An important note: people don't punch holes in walls to solve their problems, so "what did that accomplish?" isn't speaking the correct language. They don't do it "out of anger," either. That sounds like something from one of my Buddhist self-help books. No, they do it because there's not a damned thing else left to do. Some might call it "catastrophizing," but when there's no way out, you make one...with a hole...in a wall. Like Andy Dufresne, who put one big hole in the wall of his prison cell and crawled to freedom through 500 yards of shit-smelling foulness and came out clean on the other side. Lucky for him, he didn't have to patch the thing.
Monday's Christmastide Vespers Office Refrain He will judge the world with righteousness and the people with his truth.
I wonder if this hole in my wall isn't alive, if it isn't rejecting my feeble attempts to repair it because, like out of some sci-fi/horror movie, the real wound is festering, in some heart, in a life, and hasn't been healed. This house is young, built in 2009, but it's seen its share of pain. Maybe places and homes need truth and righteousness as much as people.
When I hear that Jackson Browne song, I think about how I put that hole in my wall because I love my mother and couldn't help her. A hole in the wall in the shape of a heart. I think of the cross and the sacred heart of Jesus. I don't mean to mix our liturgical seasons here, it's Advent, not Easter, this ain't the time for crucifixion talk, but if we're out here waiting in the dark, with our candle lit, then it helps to know that the god we're waiting for might just be willing to punch out a hole in the universe for us
Hello, friends and Joes (plumber Joes, G.I. Joes, regular Joes, cups of Joe, and pilgrim Joes). Today is the first day of Advent and I'm drinking and smoking and writing to forget a horrendous game of Madden 18 where I threw a pick-6 tied 14-14 in the 4th with under a minute left on the clock. Football doesn't get me in the writing mood, win or lose, but definitely lose, and especially a loss like that. I'd be better off going to the gym, working out my temple of the Holy Spirit, but I've already ran 2 miles today and if I don't start this now I'll be up until the second day of Advent.
I think it might be easier to take a loss like that on a beach in Kona, Hawaii as opposed to a small town in Northeast, Indiana where the quaint, historic downtown has more sheet metal than freshly pointed old brick. But thems the breaks. And now it's December, and it's colder, and darker, and I have to write each and every night until Christmas comes. Last year I followed a $15 liturgical calendar which I think I ordered again last week but it hasn't arrived yet. This year I'm using Christmastide by Phillip Tickle to Sherpa me through Advent.
I also have Walden and part of Thoreau's journal next to me, just in case. In his Dec. 6th, 1854 entry (age 37) he wrote: After lecturing twice this winter I feel that I am in danger of cheapening myself by trying to become a successful lecturer, i.e., to interest my audiences. I am disappointed to find that most that I am and value myself for is lost, or worse than lost, on my audience. I fail to get even the attention of the mass. I should suit them better if I suit myself less. I feel that the public demand an average man - average thoughts and manner - not originality, not even absolute excellence. You cannot interest them except as you are like them and sympathize with them. I would rather that my audience come to me than that I should go to them, and so they be sifted; i.e., I would rather write books than lectures.
And so I blog. And I try to avoid Thoreau's danger, and I do not cheapen myself, and I deal with no stares from disinterested audiences, or yawns or glances at the watch. I write for me, not for consumption. But come as you are, read if you wish, join me on this pilgrimage. Journey through Advent with me, pull it apart, test it for yourself, until Christmas morning comes and we can put it all behind us for another year. But for now, God is coming. God is on the move.
What would you do if you received news that "God is on the move"? Thank you Amber from this morning's Advent sermon for this Lewis-esque imagery.
God is on the move.
I read Lion and the Witch a few months ago but suddenly I feel the need to read it again.
If I heard that "God is on the move," I know what I'd do. To borrow a phrase (nay, a judgement) from my friend, Jennifer, I'd let the mystic inside me finally win out against troll. That's not just some saying she came up with, that's her sermon for me, that's her "repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand." That's lady Jennifer the Baptist tellin' me to check myself before I wreck myself. And it's Advent that maybe gives us the eyes to see a Facebook comment as something more than a Facebook comment, maybe a sermon, a cold drink after a run under the Thanksgiving sky, a "come on down to the river to pray," where you can relax those jaw muscles and let your paramour love you as much as she wants, all the time, whatever it takes. That's the danger Thoreau doesn't discuss, of cheapening yourself - not for others, but for yourself. To avoid, to protect, to get on with life. Advent is not the season for "getting on with life."
Jesus said to his disciples: "Be watchful! Be alert!
You do not know when the time will come."
I'm nowhere near as good at this as Ben Camino, who had me clapping along with his Ironic Advent Meditation as he insulted some Ordinary guy from Ohio. "You insulted him a little bit, [Ben], you got a little out of order yourself," so sayeth the great Robert De Niro.
Ben, I read a book called Perks of Being a Wallflower when I was 16 during Life Science class and "Landslide" was a big part of the penultimate driving-a-truck-through-a-tunnel moment in that gay, emo, early 2000s paperback novel, or at least that's how I remember it. A girlfriend I was trying to impress always carried it around in her bag and so I read it. That's not where I first heard the song, mind you. I was a classic rock kid. Creed and the other 00s bands were shit to me. I wanted Zeppelin, The Eagles, AC/DC. I knew "Landslide" was from Nicks, formerly of Fleetwood Mac (I listened to "Go Your Own Way" when that same girl was both breaking up with me and when I finally broke up with her). Ben, "Landslide" is really important to Millennials. It meant something to us. It may be the only thing I remember from Life Science.
"Can I handle the seasons of my life? I don't know."
Maybe the best thing about that song is the guitar picking, or Stevie Nicks' ghostly voice.
"I've been 'fraid of changin' 'cuz I built my life around you."
That sticks. That really sticks. Can I build my life around no one? In a cabin? In the woods? I want to. I don't know if I can. I don't know if I'm called to that. Or maybe I'm called to that and more. In the space in between. Between the woods and something else. Between the waiting and the arrival. That's Advent. This weird space where "Landslide" means something and doesn't mean anything at all and you find the meaning in the beauty and you listen to it on YouTube and Tom Petty starts playing, a voice from beyond the grave, another rock star I listened to when I was 17. "Learning to Fly."
"The good old days, may not return, the rocks might melt, and the sea may burn."
I don't even know what that means, but I learned something from it. Sometimes it helps to have a songwriter point out the obvious. And at least it wasn't Creed.
In Christmastide Vespers Office for the Sunday of the first week of Advent, there's a prayer:
Almighty God, give all of us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in that last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
If you're in this with me, if you're reading your way through Advent, burning your candle, then I guess we ought to prepare for life immortal, "The soil, it appears, is suited to the seed, for it has sent its radicle downward, and it may now send its shoots upward also with confidence. Why has man rooted himself firmly in the earth, but that he may rise in the same proportion into the heavens above?"That's the quote from Thoreau I put at the top of this blog a year ago. We are made for these times. If you think you aren't quite right, remember: you were made for this. That applies to basically everything, unless, I guess, it's sinful, in which case it doesn't apply, and if you feel like you're made for something sinful, well, you've got bigger problems than this Advent blog can handle. But it definitely applies to Advent. We were made for this.
Today was the first Sunday of Advent. We made it through. Maybe hope sustained us, maybe it was the veggie omelet from Johnny's in Huntington. I hear a 2am train in the distance and it's lulling me to sleep. Be well, pilgrim. I'll see you tomorrow.
~~~~~
Pilgrim Dude is in love and this is the sort of thing he writes when it's late and his identity is down. I rather liked it and thought it worth sharing.
You are my amante. I love you. Tomorrow/today is Monday. Have courage. Life is good. You are good. You are better than good. You are a woman made to wait on the Lord and worship and serve and love and lead and you do these things well. You are an inspiration to me, your overcoming, your cooking, your advice. I am 2 beers, 5 blunts, and 2 cups of coffee into this first Sunday of Advent and I tell you baby that if it ain't you it ain't no one, you're my amante, that's Spanish for lover, and that's a good thing. You're a good thing. In 7 minutes it's gonna be Monday, the first Monday of Advent, and I love the feel of your cheeks, your face, on my lips, under my nose, and how your face moves into a smile when I kiss you there. Today is Advent and I'm waiting on myself to be the man I know I can be for you. Amen.
Today is Thanksgiving and I'm back with a Thoreau quote.
I went on a 4 mile run this evening and as I circled back I passed the parking lot near my home. The sun had set below the woods and a deep orange glow hovered over the countryside. The parking lot lights were strangely beautiful, almost holy, and the old corner restaurant didn't feel quite so ugly as usual. Parking lots are empty on Thanksgiving. The emptiness adds something queer and transcendental.
I edited a short essay last week. I had to trim it back from 500 words to 300. I don't do much editing, what with this being a blog and all, but it was a rewarding experience. I think we should all benefit by taking the time to remove superfluous things from our lives. If a parking lot can suddenly appear holy without all the traffic, how much more could a human life become? What new and glorious things can we add to our existence by removing the unnecessary? "I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite, only a sense of existence." - Henry David Thoreau
