March 17: All the Things, Prayer, God's Love Number Twenty-Eight

[Ives] prayed, his eyes upon the painting of the Mother and Child near the altar.  He prayed for his dead adoptive father, and for his mother and father whom he had never known.  For all the things he never knew.

This passage appears on the penultimate page of the novel.  Ives has made his peace with all the heartaches of his life.  He has forgiven his son's killer, found passion for his wife again, renewed his faith in God's love and goodness.


It is late right now, pushing 11 p.m.  I've had another challenging day at work, and, at the moment, there doesn't seem to be an end in sight for the challenges.  I left the medical office with a pounding headache and a sense of futility.  Then things brightened up for a little while.  I attended my daughter's spring band concert at school.  Ordered a pizza.

After all that, I sat down to check my university e-mail.  In my inbox was a communication from the acting head of the English Department, listing all of the classes available to contingent instructors for the fall semester.  The class I've been teaching (and loving) for the past three years was not on the list.  Plus, the e-mail made it pretty clear that I may only receive one, 4-credit course to teach.  That would mean a loss of about $3,000 in income.

Unlike Ives, I am not feeling a renewed faith in God's love and goodness at the moment.  I suppose I can feel God's love in the small blessings.  I will have a class to teach.  I will he able to keep my laptop over the summer, thus this blog will continue without interruption.  I give thanks for both of those things.  God's love twenty-eight.

Now, Saint's Marty's going to have a piece of bacon pizza, brush his teeth, and take a sleeping pill.  Maybe he'll wake up in an alternate universe where poets are treated like gods and cheesecake is a vegetable.

I couldn't find a poet god cartoon