a secular prayer

Have we lost a sense of commonweal? The common well-being, the body politic. A shared welfare (another word whose shades of meaning are often shrouded).

Commonweal.

A Secular Prayer

Would that we could summon, or have someone, or something, summon unto us, for our own behalf, the solidarity of community, not riven by solipsism or divided by dissonance. Would that we could respect and honor our very own commonweal, even if by not trashing the land we traverse, or by unlittering the litter strewn before our averted or blinded eyes. Amen.

the time of day

It is Sunday morning. I thought of going to church, even wanted to, but staying up so late last night (in the wee hours) now leaves me so tired, after breakfast, that I am toying with the idea of crawling back to bed. It is an idea I hope and pray I resist. Is that depression? The whole feeling has echoes of the days of Sunday morning coming down, with hangovers both physical and existential, now 35 years ago, thank God, but still there for me if I succumb to it. I hear the sparrows and robins. The meteorological conditions seems pleasant. I don't know if any of those factors will be enough to rouse me. Morning is not my time of day anyway. Give me evening, its vespers charms of setting sun, chirping robins, and something something something. Yesterday I browsed two bookstores for a copy of the Book of Common Prayer. Here at home I have one, taken from an Episcopal church more than 15 years ago. Maybe they gave it to me. I guess I'm still a member there but have always wrestled with its suburbanness. I've been thinking of secretly returning it one Sunday, placing it in the pew holder. Why? I guess to allow me to float somewhere else, or because of a secret guilt over stealing that book. Which is nonsense, of course. Maybe I need a book of uncommon prayer. I already have those. In the morning -- usually mornings -- I read from a compilation of writings by Thich Nhat Hank and also, these days, The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer. The latter was given to me last year as a birthday or Christmas present. My tea has gotten lukewarm, not warm at all.

focus

It has been said the whole universe is found in a drop of water.

I saw it today.

Extending my arm out the car window to send out some cards (hand-written communication? how quaint!), under the lower-right lip of the mailbox's mouth, one plump drop of rain held itself suspended (or was held suspended), waiting, frozen but melted, pausing, seemingly still.

Young / And / Lost

On the cobblestoned sidewalk at the corner of graffiti-saturated Berlin's Boxhagener Strasse and Warschauer Strasse, stenciled or painted in white are these words separated by virgules, or slashes (punctuation marks meant to join, not separate, according to purists):

YOUNG  /  AND  /  LOST

I saw these words in the midst of doing laundry (very confusing machines!), while also attempting to engage in some entrepreneurial commerce. Small world.

They gave me pause.

Do these words describe a band?

An anarchic political manifesto?

Satiric irony?

A cry for help?

A simple declaration of fact (for individuals, or en masse)?

A Good Friday sermon (pithy and pointed)?

Concrete poetry (hahahahahaha)?

In any event, I mused, what makes the young think they have a lock on being lost?

I'm myself am wandering, sometimes feeling lost.

But, to borrow a phrase I recall from the Book of Common Prayer:

May I find -- and be found.

You too.

Fragment From The Book of Uncommon Prayer

Theological anthropologistical historians/herstorians report finding this fragment from The Book of Uncommon Prayer:






63. For a Person Afflicted with Woozy Wordsmithery:

O merciful Father Mother Creator, vouchsafe to guide and safeguard all logorrheic wanderers wiggling their winding way through wordly thickets of Joycean or Proustian prose posing as ponderous Pelagianism (but is in reality pontificating piffle) so that such would-be wordsmiths may find solace in your eternal Silence. Amen.