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.