Labyrinth

A friend of a friend said, "What you do is better than therapy; writing. But it is my therapy first. Maybe that is why it is better. I woke up in them iddle of the night with worries that twisted into anger and instead of writing to someone else I wrote in myself. I went into the labyrinth to work on the story and in the twists and turns I came back with so much more than when I began typing. This process is magic. Done well it threads in and out of the bowels. It disturbs, does not leave one the same; heals. Like God's, the words of storytellers do not return to us void.

Waters

The Message that comes to me tonight in the dark is love. Love, love, love. This love is the window that lets the air in, the light in the dark, the fire of life. And I am dreadfully afraid of it. I am afraid to be carried away by this love, to love something too stony or afraid to love me back. I am afraid of being done in by love. Something tells me I've been done in too many times before.

Or maybe the truth is that I've never come to this point. That anger, jealousy, impatience, shortsightedness... all of these things come in the way of me ever gettign a chance to love. I feel like last week was the door I've never gone through. With one person I wasn't willing t work things out and I broke it off. With someone else... I was broken of with. I don't know what it's like to go into these treacherous waters.

During Epiphany

This year has begun with a bicycle accident, the theft of a second bicycle, the crash of my computer and the near end of a relationship. There's been a bit more. We are in the season of Epiphany and I come to morning prayer, not to blame God, or even to engage such a person, but to enter into the experience. Prayer is, faith is, the entrance into the Experience that goes on around us that we ignore in the smallness of our lives. Our lives are focused on us, on the little bit of us we identify as important, on the small matters that keep us in yesterday and never get us to today, that keep us saying, "Tomorrow.... in ten years." The act of prayer frees us from this.

The question of how is permited, but scarcely useful. This morning I feel, after the reading, an immense sense, not of the abandonment of God, but of the great protection. Last night I felt that the world was--not pointless, but willfully malicious. Now, beyond reason, a sort of grace sets in.

We've begun the new book. When I think of what a difficult time people have in books in film these days with showing the lives of religious folk I don't think it has anything to do with religion. Religion, when it is good, is about our connections to our people, the small people we are born into as well as our society, and through them the connection we feel to the cosmos in general. The way call religion is a root into both of these worlds. Sadly enough, most people these days feel none of these things.

The fact that I'm obsessing about not having my messages returned by someone who couldn't possibly have returned them by now shows just how much I'm trying to evade writing.

Note: don't sabotage this relationship. For such a long time i've been trying to be in a relationship and when I fianlly am in one, I am so used to relationships beign bad that I keep trying to to sabptage this. The combination of jealous obsessing and shirking work is not a good one. I'm tempted to say I should meditate, but really, I ought to be working. That's the best meditation. For everytime I've thought: why am I waiting for your call, obsessing about the messages you don't return? I have better things to do, I ought to realize this: I really do have better things to do. I'm just being lazy.