end of it all

It is nearly 6 am and I just prayed. I talked out loud to God while I sat on my couch in my little white cabin in Misty Meadows. I told him I am not sure whether he hears me when I pray. I usually think my prayers, which means, usually, that I space out and wind up just thinking about what ever memories or fears happen to drift through my mind. Resentment and fear. Worry.  Waste of time in the sense that nothing useful, beautiful, or true ever comes from it. It seems then I am just talking to myself. Talking out loud felt strange but seemed right. I told him I was worried about my work situation and that I would trust him to find me the right job at the right time. I asked him to take care of my friend, Connie, and her husband who is also a good friend of mine. I asked him to watch over my mother and the rest of my family. I asked him to show me how to be a better friend and to help me to do a good job with the kids I will be working with today in North Philly. I said, “Thank you.”

I picked up a book by Father Richard Rohr about contemplation and read it for minute. Then God spoke to me. My body filled with heat and my eyes filled with tears and I know he hears me now and forever. I has happened this way for years and I am not sure why. I might be partly crazy but I don’t think so. It seems comparable to getting wet in the rain or sweating in the summer heat. He is present to me and I am present to him and there are no words. Then the thoughts came and it was time to write.

When I was trying to become a Trappist monk, the vocation monk told me I was a contemplative. He said that meant I had to be willing to be invisible and to pray in the background for the activities of men and for God’s wisdom and grace to be with them. It didn’t sound glamorous at all. I kind of want to be famous and recognized by big crowds of people. This business of being invisible has no appeal. Merton was a Trappist and he was famous. I can write books from the silence and then big crowds of people will look me up and come to roll around in my wisdom and spiritualness. Maybe I can meet Joan Baez.

Well, I can’t be a Trappist because I am too old, I have two daughters I love who need me to work to support them, and I have a protestant girlfriend who gets pissed off whenever I try to play the monk. I have a mind that rarely stops moving but when it does I find myself overflowing with unbearably joyful sorrow. Sometimes it is comforting; most times it just hurts. This makes me a contemplative and I pray in the background more invisible than the most invisible Trappist. I work with the poor kids in Philly to pay my bills and child support. I pray for the real monks and go to my meetings with the crumbling alcoholic souls I find myself around. We learn to heal one another in our wounds. God is here, now, in this, exactly. God is in the world because he made us in his image and likeness and he put us into the world. I trust that he will find a place for me somewhere and that he will teach me to make a place for him within me. Father James, Father Andrew, and all my monk brothers pray for me.

Somehow some day we will make a book out of this though books are going the way of druidic bards, cuneiform, and hieroglyphics. I write with no particular hope anyone will read or care much about what I have to say. I think God wants me to write because I can and want to most days so I pray if you read this, it finds you well and helps you in some way. john