But really, to continue on from above, or below, the words that are meant for the cutting floor are not the important ones, those lines that serve to vent our minor complaints about the lives we ourselves have created for ourselves.  Granted, we need the courage to face them, to get them out there.  They are not as serious, or as meaningful, as the ones of deeper thought, the ones that grow upward out of the roots of earthly complaint and sore assessment.

The deeper thoughts, like the Shroud image, like the angel informing one of the pattern that could be construed as a non-bleeding stigmata, are the important ones, the beautiful ones, sustaining us.  The ones into which all little writer details about guitars and whatever other objects will come to rest in, leaves upon a tree...

And like unto the word of Jesus himself.  Considered thoughts, balanced, worked upon, honed, precise as metaphor, the parables, the important stuff.  Even as we think we cannot possibly ever use them or bring them into any sort of practical purpose or use.  Thus, our sleeplessness.  The great awkward fear over how to use ourselves for the best...


"But you're a writer, if that, and what good is that for the world?  If you are moved so, then go work in a soup kitchen, or a hospital.  Enough of the fantasy.  Go and earn a living, how about that, my friend."

silently within.  obscure thoughts:

But Jesus was a writer, a wordsmith.  And His stuff was about the human condition.  He has values, ones that are helpful to us, like about materialism, fairness...  Uhm, spirituality, well, obviously.  The words are fresh, full fields of interpretation and science.   Engaging. 

It's not bad to try writing, if only out of some youthful idealism, as you make your raw way into the world.

"But writing can be a huge waste of time and effort.  Navel staring.  Postponing what you really need to be doing as a grown-up, caring for self and supporting family....  Irresponsible.  Leading to no practical good in this world that you have to make it in.  Might be okay for the college student, but grow up.  You're not young anymore.  That ended a long time ago.  A long time ago."

There is no response to such things.  How can there be...

The mind works with different logic, I'm afraid.  Until you're thrown into debtors prison or bad things happen, but by then, in that logic it's too late to do anything anyway;  you needed to start a real career ages ago.

It's a different logic.  The problem is the human being, in God's image.  That's the problem.  It's a sad problem, yes no doubt.  That we have to be closeted.  That our being must be exploited in some commercial fashion.  Working in a bar.  Teaching in a school.  Selling so many widgets.  What would Jesus do?  Where would he fit in?  As if he could ever be commercialized...


My problem is not depression, so much.  It's anxiety.  It's troubled waters.  The nerves that come with running through the modern check-list, of what I should be doing, what do I need to do.

And there are things you cannot change.


The innocent attempt to meet spirituality halfway though, perhaps it soothes more than it disturbs.  Perhaps it helps you with personal habits, with getting home without responding to the aggravating ends of Jazz Night evenings jerked-around.  It helps when you get home, too tired to do anything but go to bed, without getting into the wine.


But what would He do for a job?  Who would assuage his anxiety, his occasional terrors?  Who would take care of him?  Who would understand him?  Who would join him?  Who would help him understand the practicalities of the world, of society, of empire and local taxes?  Who would employ him?  What would ever be a professional about?

Stupid questions.

Fear is a terrible thing.  Hemingway liked to write about it.  How bullfighters legs would shake uncontrollably.  Courage, his subject.  At all things.

So you meditate, exercise, talk to a therapist, and so on.  Who knows, maybe even go to a church one day.

"Are you gay?"

I get that from time to time.  "No, just a Christian, or a Theosophist, Buddhist, something like that."

That's always the way it goes, for Christians.  A secret society.  The awkwardness.

It was necessary, the societies, the Christian label.  The defining.  What is now not so necessary, as doing yoga alone taming the muscles at home is a Christian act like those of Francis and the sick wolf.  Knowing who are is reassuring.  A self-knowledge that brings one calm, protection from the exploitation of the mind.    A way to basically know good from bad, right from wrong, even as that is always a hard thing to know, to ask of your own intentions, gentlemanly as they are, basically...

These days one is a private citizen, and Jesus, remaining who He is, is more a general presence, less tribal, less ossified, less structured.

That takes a lot of energy to say, a lot of anxious time.  But all of that leads you, in a way.  An abandonment of the cheap sell-out.