My Cath-lick friend in NA (north Arkansas) texts he’s about to start his prayers. I like the sound of that. And I believe him. I text back Keep praying for my son. Will my friend light candles? Kneel and kiss the crossed crucifixed feet? Stand and finger the beads? Hell if I know. He can stand on his head for all I care. Just pray.

This friend and I both grew tall in evangelical fields buzzing like bees with sinner’s prayers and potlucks and bow your head/close your eyes and When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder. We were there alright. We were boys then. As men we set out for older growth pastures. We became aware of the possibility of “the search…to be onto something” (Walker Percy). We both had our reasons, but the general gist? Things got too close, what was once an embrace became a prison. A mitigation was in order. It was expensive. Still feels that way to me at times. I live, as Frank Stanford wrote, “like a dragonfly on a dog chain.”

There are those who refer to what I’m talking about as deconstruction. I call it growing up.

My friend and I both reside now in Arkansas—the South, the country of moon and magnolia. He never left. I left and came back. Seth Haines kicks at the darkness with camera and pen. Me mostly pen, although I have dreamt of a used Leica. But even used, lord they’re expensive. Then again, everything is.

He’d simply reacted, tried to keep someone from falling. Grabbing Jessie Randall’s waist was an improper move he would never have made in a million years, especially standing in the 15-items-or-less line at the grocery store. But he simply reacted. Jessie laughed in the moment, easy like a schoolgirl would chasing a friend on a playground. It seemed a laugh light enough to fly over the fence he’d been building around himself and settle on his shoulder. It did not elicit a laugh in return but rather a wide smile, wide like when Sarah was very much alive and he was too. “I’m sorry, Jessie. I guess I’m wobbly as well.” She laughed again, easy like before. “Samuel, you only ask forgiveness when you’ve done something wrong, right?” And with that she took the dozen donuts she’d purchased—six glazed, six chocolate (he noticed)—and waved and walked away. It all so razzled Samuel that he tried to pay for his groceries with his library card. The cashier, a woman he’d actually been on a date with about a year ago, sighed and said, “C’mon. Wake up, Romeo.”

From that moment on, which most people would say was simply an ordinary moment in an ordinary day, he could not stop thinking about Jessie Randall, who most people knew as Rev. Jessie Randall, the minister at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church. In Samuel’s mind, yes, there was an ordinariness to that moment in the grocery store, those kinds of encounters happen every day, simply another instance in humanity’s honky-tonk parade. And while Samuel believed in the beauty of the ordinary, he also believed something else too, or at least he had when Sarah was alive. You see, Samuel believed in what he called “the gaps”—those experiences where the world’s garment gapes and your attention is drawn to something unordinary, something that arrests you and just might seduce you. Samuel believed what you glimpsed in the gaps could only be described by one word—magic. When Sarah died that belief almost died, which is to say a large part of what makes Samuel Samuel almost died too.

But that moment of getting all tangled up with Jessie Randall in the express lane gave him pause, caused him to wonder if the world wasn’t quite finished with him yet, that maybe, just maybe life still had a trick or two up the sleeve.

Extended hospital stays—where time turns in on itself and you lose your grip on the threads or the reins or the wheel or something. Our son has been in what I call Shawshank (the hospital) for thirteen days now…feels like thirteen months. After UPSing, I’ve made afternoon commutes to Little Rock for the 2nd shift—the Dad shift—then back in the evenings. I’ve resorted to podcasts to keep me awake. You know, some podcasts are quite good. Some are shitty. Anyway, last night it was the combo of Mary Karr’s twang and Krista Tippet’s laugh. Near the end of their conversation, Karr talked of seeing a little old lady pushing a walker, the dignity and quiet strength of this marvelous creature. She said “I’m not much impressed by sunsets, not a nature girl,” but that little old lady was “just pretty to watch.”

Now hearing someone else say someone was “just pretty to watch” would likely ring hollow. But there’s something about Mary, and I thought yes, I know what you’re talking about. That was around the Exit 118 mark on the highway, the point where I started believing in God again. See, back at Exit 129, I wasn’t so sure any of this Godness is real, maybe we’re simply barking at the sky and constructing a narrative to make us feel sorta-sure in an unsure world. This off-again/on-again belief happens. Lord, help my flickery. Anyone who tells me they’ve never doubted or pressed pause due to “the awful grace of God,” well, good for them, or maybe you. But grief I have, do, will.

But I started believing again when I heard sister Karr say, “It was just pretty to watch.” In fact, that line drew tears from my sleepy eyes. You see, I’ve seen “pretty” in Shawshank. Yes, pretty. Now don’t get me started on the hospital crappy because that list is long. But I can witness to the pretty. Total strangers holding the elevator for me and saying, “Good job, you made it!” The cashier downstairs in THE GRILL giving me the senior discount with a wink. Nurses who are truly nurses and not just people with a nursing job. My son’s smile yesterday when I pulled a quote from Nacho Libre.

I’m not talking about optimism, but hope. I heard Leif Enger make that distinction between words on another evening-drive podcast. Hope is the thing that stays whether the other thing(s) work out or not. I’m iffy on it being the thing with feathers. I’d say it’s thing with guts, to keep gutsing it out between Exit 129 and Exit 118. To just keep going, to keep watching, listening…for the pretty.  

the beer and the climate change play. Back here where

God’s COUNTY FAIR never shutters for any season.

Lookit down the midway for an eyeful of attractions

essentially unchanged since the cutting of the ribbon.

Current iterations include a red-capped barker barking

step right up for a chance at the game, the greatest game

the world has ever known! Once upon a time we believed

in the game. But the mad barker’s gig is rigged and we

swear we won’t be fooled again. But we probably will.

🌎

The once Bearded Lady has now gone clavicularly smooth

except for tiny facial bone cracks—places where the meth

gets out. It’s sad to see but face it, impossible to look away.

But don’t you worry, all is not phantasmagoric. Hey, listen,

do you hear that? That’s the soothingly 70s sounds of one

Labi Siffre. C’mon, who doesn’t love a good comeback story,

right? Bless the Lord and the telephone. And look there,

standing by the House of Mirrors is that Ann with no e—

the writer who owns the shop where the muses live. Her

new novel snorts this fall. There’s a reason to keep getting up.

🌎

Funny how those astronauts reminded us what’s down here—

the good, the bad, the fugly. All down here for the taking, the

making, the shaking and the baking. Home—the only one we’ve

got and we’re all a COUNTY FAIR family, best dance with them

that brung ya. Yes, all of them. If we only had the eyes to see.

Maybe every so often it’s good to spend alabaster money to send

an eight-eyed silver goddess far to the dark side of darkness

to send back the light, a rouse-awake to our far-country senses

at how prodigally dulled we’ve grown. Get up and make straight

for the gate. Remember, admission is free. Come back home.

“When it comes to love the odds are not in our flavor.” She didn’t blush this time, didn’t catch her word-glitch. I still had to smile. She gave me a hug then turned to look up into the night sky. “O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!” Jen, my gorgeous, brilliant, slightly inebriated best friend since childhood quoting Hopkins on the front lawn to try and buoy my spirit. I don’t deserve my life.

I’m convinced that deep in some Himalayan mountain there’s a hidden cave with shiplap on the walls painted with these words in decorative script:

That’s the secret, the narrative arc. The word order is fluid, save for that last one. Life hurls toward loss. Period. It’s about umpteen other things along the way, thankfully, but that last one refuses to budge. That’s a lotta l’s though. Fairchild called attention to that letter, “its melody, its grace, its small-breasted, skinny-hipped, lithe evocativeness…the Audrey Hepburn of consonants.”

Patrick introduced me to B.H. Fairchild. Patrick my neighbor. Patrick who just died of colon cancer or from colon cancer or lost his battle with colon cancer. Our verbal gymnastics around death wear me out. It is still our greatest fear, the darkness. The day before he died Patrick called me from his hospital bed and said -

the old dream, of men becoming gods

or at the very least, as they remove

their wings, being recognized as men.

That’s Fairchild. And that was Patrick. Someone of whom I’d grown fond.

Maybe Jen is right. In vino veritas. “I’m sorry for your cross.” Each of us is given a cross at the age of accountability (whenever that is, different for each). On that cross we pin all those we grow fond of in this life, sorta like the way teens in the 70s pinned heartthrobs to bedroom cork boards. If you’re lucky, your cross grows heavier and heavier, the crushing burden of love. But as life hurls along one by one they are taken down from that cross due to realities like colon cancer and car wrecks and time. God removes the wings from our fond ones—now fire-folk—then hands them everlasting lawn chairs and tells them to sit in the sky and wait for us. They shine like Hopkins’ stars.

There’s no way to prepare for the pain of starlight though. The way the shining hurts. It feels rude. The dream of the rude (rood?).

I need a drink.

Just the other day Meredith recalled something I used to say a hundred years ago as a green pastor: “God is good, all the time.” Get this, I’d boom the first three words from the pulpit and the pewed people would boom back the final three. As I replay that in my head now that I’m a darker shade of green and no longer preaching, that memory has pep rally vibes at best, Pavlovian response stuff at worst. Sure, sure, if I only knew then what I know now but that’s not how life works, and you know I’ve no interest in haranguing the THEN version of me because the NOW version wouldn’t be what it is without the THEN. Still, that memory pains me. I’d been ordained to be a shepherd—one who keeps watch—and I possibly led some to boom words they didn’t believe in their feet. Not that they didn’t believe in God, and not that they didn’t believe God is good, just that they choked on the bone of “all the time.” Look, I understand group dynamics, talking yourself into a new way of feeling, stages of faith, the power of liturgy to form us, all that. But still, I’m sorry I said that then. I want to be forgiven.

Meredith said, “I could never see you saying that now” to which I replied, “No, I wouldn’t.” Ah, and then the spousal press: “So what would you say?”

“God is God, all the time.” That’s my confession, Winn.

I’m not sure we do it consciously. Probably most of the time we’re not even aware of it. After all, it’s so very human. We define good from a vantage point, usually of privilege or blessing or both. We believe that most when things are going our way. But ask the Iranian parents of those girls whose school was recently bombed if God is good all the time. Or ask the young couple who long for nothing more than a child yet they’ve experienced miscarriage after miscarriage if God is good all the time.

I can hear a voice quickly retort, “But those things aren’t God, John.” It must be nice to see so clearly through the glass darkly.

I’m not calling into question God’s character, putting God in the dock. I believe God is good, like I believe God is love. But a “good” and a “love” with teeth, not the comfy warm blanket Flannery in all her oddpeacocked glory warned us of. I also believe God is hard and thrilling and frustrating and merciful and beautiful and frightening and simple and unplumbable and creative and upsetting and whirlwind and quiet and…

If we think we contain multitudes, God says, “Verily, hold my vino.”

If God’s ways are not our ways, then God’s goodness may not be as our goodness and God’s love may not be as our love. God. Good. Love. Words we so casually drop and at times even boom.

God is God, all the time.

I said Are you looking forward to Kenfucky?

Sorta playful, flirty. My wife laughed (whew).

She said Are you going to say that when we

see our friends? knowing already I would

because gosh who can resist that apple?

~

I read those very important online edicts:

WHAT NOT TO SAY TO GRIEVING PEOPLE

always written by “grief experts.” I’m sorry,

grief expert? Don’t you mean a regular human?

Anyway, you know those pieces, caveats to

avoid the Kinkadian hues during weepy time

hosted by those dark twins—deathy and lossy.

Expertly intentioned lists, sure, but I fear they

give doubt a tonguehold, one that creates a

pause in simple hearts and in some cases brings

on the decision to not saying anything at all

spooked they might utter something amateury

when saying anything at all means so very much.

E.g.—“She’s in a better place.” Yes, that bangs

a hollow gong and in the moment might make

you want to howl and wolf their little larynx out.

But riddle me this—what if that’s not 100% off?

~

What if that “better place” is a bit like Kenfucky?

And she’s there with friends who love her like the

absolute dickens, they’re being sorta playful, flirty,

laughing like kids in summer rain. Now if you’ve

never experienced Kenfucky then there’s no way

you can swallow that, so you’re wise to be iffy.

Yet to even imagine such a place is really real

leaves a sticky goop of hope on you. And the hope

experts say that’s a dangerous, wondrous thing.

Virginia Evans gave birth to something so special while at the same time so ordinary, a baby so splendid. Now that I’ve read the book I want to get the backstory on her and the path to pub and all that. I vowed to avoid all such spoilers until I’d read it. Winn, she had me pretty much outta the gate when I read Sybil writing to Joan Didion, AND JOAN REPLIES. I was like “Let’s go, girls.”

I know you’ve read it and loved it too, not surprising as you gravitate to the epistolary. That word always makes me grin, Winn. I can hear my beautiful father preaching from the pulpit about “Paul’s epistles” and then feel (since I sat next to him) Steve Hooper laughing out loud in the pew beside me which made me laugh not quite so loud but still noticeable enough to draw the crow-eyed-glare of Baptists with their halos on too tight. Such a reaction would at once boil my boy blood and break my adolescent heart…people I loved acting so small when life is so precious and brief. As the Whyte-man writes: “The world was made to be free in.” Amen.

Two weekends ago I spoke at that conference down in Florida. I’d told you about it. I was a little nervous, not about speaking so much although those muscles are a bit rusty these days, but more about doing a good job for my friend. I enjoyed the time, Winn, I really did. And furthermore, I enjoyed the people. There’s a bit of hero-worship going on down there, that was clear. But here’s the deal. The pastors and staff there are in the business of giving people second chances (some third, fifth, tenth, seventy times seven), and people are hungry for that, starving for it, which naturally, humanly, leads to some hero-worship.

But here’s the deal. I’m okay with that. In fact, I love that, for it’s so special yet so ordinary, i.e., so beautiful. All weekend long I had the earworm of Peter Gabriel’s version of Bowie’s “Heroes”—“we can be heroes just for one day/we can be us just for one day.” We so need someone somewhere in this life to give us a second or fifteenth chance, even if just for one day. It has nothing to do with us doing something to earn that extra chance, but everything to do with us realizing we’ve been given such grace (umpteen times) and so we keep the river flowin’, man. And if that begets a bit of hero worship—let’s go, girls. To be grace-heroes in this world, in this life that is so precious and so brief…hell, man, that’s not being on the right side of history, that’s being on the right side of God.

To see you this past weekend in flesh and blood was pure gift—grace. I’ll see you again late April, cain’t wait. I’m returning The Correspondent today as I’m sure there are others starving in line. And I’ll grab The Buffalo Hunter Hunter as it is ready for pickup. I’ve been waiting on that one for weeks as well. You know, I might just write Virginia Evans a letter…

Westward always, into the sun.

John

we’ll cattle forward as the priest takes his

pale thumb and smears our foreheads so we

can reflect, and post rapido on Instagram.

So it begins again. Lent. Rhymes with hint.

Hint that while we’re born of stardust (yay),

we’re but dirt. Rhymes with hurt, syn.—woe.

Oh, woe is me for I am a man of unclean lips.

Rhymes with hips. God I love hips. The only

thing more powerful than hate is love, and

hips in Levis. See, there it is, the priest says,

I smeared you so. Yeah man, the dirt abides.

My stout snout sniffing for whiffs of God.

Precious little else so thoroughly lampoons

all my unspoken pieties, a.k.a.—CONTROL.

To think, grown men and women kneeling

with their backsides and soles/souls displayed.

I remember Dunne telling Didion—“Only

Episcopalians ‘take’ Communion. Catholics

‘receive’...Joan, it’s a difference in attitude.”

The priest offers me the wafer. To avoid any

hints of earnest fakery I take AND receive.

John/Joan would be pleased. Bases covered.

The onion skin thin wafer holds the imprint

of a cross. I thumb it clockwise and voila: X,

bringing to mind the final scene in Logan and

Laura’s eulogy—“No more guns in the valley”—

lines from Shane, my father’s favorite western.

My father. Dead and gone near five years now.

Wait, how’d I get there? Is this kneeling about

faith, or grief? Maybe both? God can it be both?

Communion—THE GREAT DISRUPTION.

The cup arrives. I drink, don’t dip—hygiene

be damned. I hold it’s a difference in attitude.

I pause. I rise. I join the herd headed home.

“the mundane truth of anyone’s life—is to take love any way it comes.”

Annick Smith, In This We Are Native

Here on the true backend of fifty, I’ve taken to praying in this manner. I tell God my plans for the day, what I want to do, where I want to go, who I want to be. I try to list everything for the day. I realize that’s a lotta wants and we’re exhorted to distinguish between wants and needs but such parsing exhausts the hell outta me. Then I pause and I swear to God I hear God say, “We’ll see.” The voice is not condescending, kibitzing, patronizing, or holier-than-thou-ing (although it has every right to be). No, the voice is still, small, the way my father told me he heard the voice of God.

And then I step into the day, and take love any way it comes—which means paying attention, listening, looking, even eavesdropping as best I can which is what “pray without ceasing” means, at least it does to me.

That’s how these days begin. And I try at night, last thing before closing my aging eyes, to say Thank you. For all the ways love came to me that day—ways I wanted, ways I didn’t, ways I welcomed, ways I cussed—thank you, for it all, every damn stitch. Some days I miss a night, but I’m trying.

I could eloquently pen 45-50k words on prayer, guide you on a 12-week prayer JOURNEY, invite you on a $1250 prayerapalooza weekend…or I could just tell you what I just told you. I choose the latter. Prayer is difficult, but it’s not hard. That quiet renegade Eugene Peterson said prayer is “listening speech.” Heavy on the listening, the looking. We sure do like the speeching. We’ve swallowed the lie that talking is thinking. By the way, we sure put the screws to old Eugene there at the end, didn’t we? Progressives heaving on the left, conservatives yanking from the right, pretty much tore that man asunder if you ask me. Did anyone ever say I’m sorry about all that, forgive us for we knew what we were doing and we did it anyway? Nah, just count coup and move on. Good thing Eugene was a friend of God.

There are friends loyal to your iconography, and there are friends loyal to your soul. It’s good to know the difference.