Sunday night.  Dinner service might appear easy, not much on the book, but a table of four decides to sit upstairs with you, back in the wine room.  They order cocktails.  A White Russian, requiring cream, the busser from last night did not stock any.  Dessert for the regulars over in the corner.  Just then, local regulars at the bar, a couple from Southern India, both with several higher degrees, royal enough to be given little tastings to match their evening's palates.  Then, right on top of that, as three cocktails sit out on the little bar mat, ready to be shaken, a man comes up from downstairs, soon joined by his date, their first.  A bottle of Malbec, drop off drinks, get the royal couple full glasses in decent wine glasses, cheese plate ordered...  take order for back table...

The night goes on, and just about 8:45, the young woman who was by on the eve of President's Day, who likes to drink with an Irish calling for it, comes and sits at the bar with a girlfriend of hers, to hash over the date she had to escape from from up the street...

Elizabeth is near by, so she drops in, and the date couple is drinking port after their dinner, and the night is going to drag on for the barman sore from a crazed Saturday night...



Somewhere in the mind, the optimistic voice of Father Barron comes out of the recesses of the mind from Word On Fire scenic Catholicism series of DVDs you have around the apartment...  "Jesus gets in your boat."

The same anxious waking at 4:45 AM, in bed as from the night before.  Just recently, taking to heart the advice from the neighborhood healer, Bronwyn, about the importance of hydration, at least 80 oz. of water every day.

You wonder, it comes out of the last people at the bar, the girl who is now kind of drunk all of a sudden, oh Jesus... and the old friend who wants company, and I need to hear her out about all the goings on with her job at the school where as an assistant principal she is being treated horribly by the principal...

The people, in other words, who make it so that I am worn out to the point of an apparent need for the glass of wine I don't really want.   Being left out on the Cross, as it were.

"Jesus...  getting into your boat..."    You've gone beyond the requirements of service at the bar.  Maybe you have a few checks left to drop off, credit cards to swipe.  Of course, you still have the report to do, and the final clean up and putting away of the wines in an orderly fashion, the juices in the cooler, but now, there is that time with at least one other person at the bar, a person to listen to.  And you're tired, so you sit down at take a small bite from the salmon tartar.  Running low on gas.  Sore again.  You pour yourself a little pinot noir from the Pays D'Oc to go with the flaked salmon flesh.

It's an extra.  You don't need to be doing it.  You could turn up the lights, shoo people away, turn cold on old regulars, pull out your smartphone and ignore them.  But you don't.  It's not just the job, it's not just the money.  It's something else.


So.  Then.  So, then you get up, up out of bed.  You don't know the day's purpose, beyond just trying to take care of yourself in a healthy way.  Yes, you'll go to work, straining at it, needing the hot shower and the little plans to keep things running.    You hope to make the Safeway at the end of the shift, but it is Jazz Night and you never know what will happen.

You have to leave the purposes up to something higher, the new life afforded by the practice of the Christian form...  along with the wisdom of Buddha to keep you in a state of discernment...


Even at the cost of self-disbelief, even at the cost of ridicule, at the cost of things suffered in the face of faith, it's better to have some energy and hope when getting up, even when nothing at all is clear, even in the cold of winter.  To find some self-confidence to birth some dignity to carry forward with the day, allowing, if it might, some purpose, higher, to come to you.  Clear-headed.