A COVID Memorial

A year ago this month, the COVID lockdowns set in across America. In those 365ish days, we’ve all felt the effects—physical, mental, financial. And in this second Lent of the pandemic, the days in which a vaccine brings some shad of hope, the coronavirus from Hell continues to work us over.

John Blase, a friend and fellow writer, felt the effects of COVID last week.,He shared the news on Twitter.

Today, John wrote a poem about his father, who was a preacher by trade. By John’s account, his dad was one of the good ones. John is not the sort to gush on about preachers, so his words are more than poignant. They are a true memorial. I hope you’ll read them.

We’re still in the woods, and stories like this one remind us. As you go about your day today, remember the many like John who’ve felt the sting of this damnable disease. And go easy.

Creating Lent (What is the Work of Your Hands?)

Lent: The penitential season where we move (with great intention) from our gorged, swollen, addicted state to something more Divine. At least, that’s the hope. But is Lent all about fasting and prayers and saying holy things on the internet to garner attention?

Dear God, I hope not.

We are created in the image of a Creator, at least the ancient books says so. If this is true, and if Lent is a journey to connecting with the grace of our originally created state, shouldn’t Lent include some act of creation? Yes, I say.

Years ago, I wrote a novel. It was a beast of a thing (quite literally), entitled Bears in the Yard (you can read it in serial installments by joining here). It’s the story of a man who is making his pilgrimage to end, the great beyond, the far shore, whatever. It’s a recasting of his life—the joyful, the regrettable, the sexual, the sensual, the mournful. When I finished that novel, I let it sit. And sit. And sit. It sat while the earth made eight cycles around the sun, and this Lent, I’ve dusted it off. My goal? To complete the editorial process and get it to a literary agent by Easter. 

40 days to polish a novel. Let’s go.

 I create because I was made to create. So were you. Your mode of creation is different than mine, of course. You work wood, tie flies, knit stocking caps. You paint, sketch, stitch together haiku. Maybe you make those country checkerboards with roosters painted on the edges. Whatever your chosen mode, that act of creation is an act of becoming more Divine. It is a sort of liturgy, an act of prayer. 

Today, set a creation goal as a Lenten practice. You have 40 days to make something new, something unique to you. What will it be? If you’re so inclined, let me know by shooting me an email.

Why Am I Distracted in Prayer? (A Lenten Question)

Ash Wednesday is here, and so, I began the discipline of learning to pray the Morning Prayers of the Divine Office. For the unacquainted, the Daily Office is a way of praying through the Psalms (and selected scriptures) at certain hours of the day, which is why it is sometimes called “The Liturgy of the Hours.”

As I worked my way through the Psalms, my mind wandered, fickle as it is. Some small phrase reminded me of Eliot’s poem “Ash Wednesday,” which of course reminded me of the references to Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” which of course led me to thinking about a conversation Shawn Smucker and I had about writing a serial novel in which a middle-manager from middle America realizes that he is the Antichrist. This was no less than a five-minute diversion.

This is how the mind wanders in prayer.

Prayer, meditation, contemplation—why are we so distractible in it? When communicating with the Divine Love, shouldn’t we be more attuned?

Last night, I read Amber’s latest newsletter, “A Witness, a Work, and a Word: For When You Might Not Feel It.” (This is a subscriber’s only newsletter, but I promise it’s worth your time and a few bucks.) In it, she shared of Jacques Fesch, a twentieth century French murderer:

“Yesterday morning I read an excerpt from one the Prison Letters of “Servant of God” Jacques Fesch, who was a thief and a murderer in the 1950s. It was in prison that he came to believe and understand how very loved he was by God, and as he awaited his death sentence, he spent his meantime writing letters, testifying to that love in such a profound and real way that the church in France seeks his beatification. Again, I am a sucker for the saints, particularly the ones who know good and well how easy it is to pull a gun on a man. 

In the excerpt, Fesch discusses his current season, how hard it is to pray, his mind wandering, a lack of concentration, a stagnation, and what feels like spiritual paralysis. Oh, Brother Fesch, I feel you. He says he had experienced such lack of clarity and emotion before and knew that the recovery on the other side of it brought him to a state much greater than the one he was in before he’d fallen so low. The healing he needed to receive required the obstacles he was enduring. It’s faith that can say a thing like that in the midst of such loss and such expectation for further loss. He knew he’d be walking to a guillotine one day.”

To be human is to be distracted in prayer, whether we’d like to admit it or not. To be human, though, is also to keep pursuing the practice of prayer, even if our lot is the guillotine.


Can You Set Lenten Goals? (You bet.)

Fat Tuesday. Mardi Gras. The last day to consume all the booze, beads, sugar, sex—whatever—in preparation for a forty day fast. (This is my Louisiana blood talking.) This binge before the purge is, of course, not the most spiritually actualized approach to the final day of Ordinary Time. Still, human as we are, a good lot of us will go out with a consumptive bang, an experience of the grand Whizz Bang you’ve all come to know and love.

This year, I have decided to take a bit of a different course. Instead of binging, I’m preparing. I’ve spent the morning outlining a path of growth toward grace. And no, that does not simply mean setting a bunch of spiritual growth goals, though there are a few of those. Instead, it means living into the grace of my own “human merely being,” as E.E. Cummings wrote. How? Consider a short list.

  1. The Purge. As I wrote yesterday, I’m fasting from Twitter and Facebook (save and except to promote “A Drink with a Friend,” the podcast I cohost with Tsh Oxenreider). A less digital life leads to a more human one.

  2. The Prayer. I’m learning to pray the Liturgy of the Hours, beginning with morning and evening prayers. This way of praying has been a staple of Christian devotion for round about 1,500 years. If the monks, priests, and great saints of history have benefited from it, surely I can too. (For more on the Liturgy of the Hours, go here.)

  3. The Project. I’m finishing a writing project. My novel, Bears in the Yard, has been lying dormant for almost 8 years. It’s time to finish it up. (If you want to read the installments, join the paying subscribers on my Substack channel. I think you’ll enjoy it.)

  4. The Poetry. I’m digging deeper into the work of the great poet, T.S. Eliot. Through it, I hope to get a sense of his own human experience, the way he balanced the spiritual and the physical.

It’s a modest list. I’m subtracting some things, adding others. Through it, I’m hoping to experience my humanity a little more in this Lenten season. And as the great day of Easter dawns, I hope to better understand the necessity of the redemption of the body, of all things.

It’s Fat Tuesday. Mardi Gras. Go ahead and engage your large appetites if you must. But before you do, ask yourself: How will I approach this Lenten season? Then, chart a course.

The Quieter Spaces (Lent 2021 Preview)

I write about many things: sobriety; spirituality; life examination; a layman’s take on politics; photography; the craft of writing. If you’ve been following my writing over the years, you’ve suffered my eclectic bag of words. Thank you.

We’re moving into Lent, a season in which I’m bound to write about silent spirituality and the search for quiet wisdom. That is, after all, what Lent has come to mean to me. It is a time to reflect on my own brashness, my penchant toward noise, my duplicity (which is nothing more than a fancy way for noting my own hypocrisy).

Beginning on Ash Wednesday, I’ll stretch into the quiet examination of Lent. I’m marking the season with a 40 day fast from Twitter and Facebook. I’ll be turning my digital energy back here, a place I’ve neglected too long. Consider joining me in the fast. Consider joining me on the journey, too. Let’s see what we’ll find in the quieter spaces. And if you need a guide this Lenten season, might I suggest grabbing a copy of The Book of Waking Up: Experiencing the Divine Love that Reorders a Life? There is something discretely Lenten in those pages, something that might guide you from any old addiction and toward true sobriety.