There are days your chest constricts so tight, claws of stress reaching through you, twisting your valves, breaking down your artery walls. These are the days to shrink from superficial social networks so the walls of fear — the walls that surround the space you were born to inhabit — can come tumbling down and you can march into Jericho and live the life you were born to live.

There are entire years you pilfered away pursuing this, that and something else. Entire decades hoping for love and acceptance from all the usual suspects. It wasn’t to be. It’s time to surrender your earthly desires and step into a future that is more holy, righteous, pure and divine.

When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. (Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians)

Yesterday, on the way to Sullivan’s basketball game he called to me from the back seat. “Mom,” he said, “Do you know why I like baseball more than basketball? Because the sun is so warm on my face.”

I give thanks for a boy who is more love than game, more mercy than competition. These are his spiritual gifts, but I am unsure of their names.

Prelude To Spring

The first official day of spring is still several weeks away, but it feels like winter is closing shop early. The park and the pitcher’s mound are hungry for bats and boys, gloves and balls. Silence stretches across the yellow grass of winter, nips at the playground, taps on the doors of the houses across the street. Porch lights and tail lights dot the blurry, winding lane. Sometimes, things are more beautiful when they are out of focus. Like those other glorious points of light. The lamp you put in your window. The lamp by which you read. The lamp that waves from the shore as me and my life go rocketing by.

Excerpt from Preludes by T.S. Eliot

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