November 13: Bad Choices, Light Years, "As It Is"

I have a friend who is making bad choices.  She is turning her back on her children and spouse.  She knows what she's doing is selfish and stupid and destructive, but she doesn't care.  Nobody can change her mind, and she is most likely going to end up alone, without anyone to depend on.  Her bridges are burning.  That's what addiction does.

Please lift up this friend in your thoughts.  If you're a praying person, say some prayers for her and her spouse and kids.  Hope seems like a distant star for them.  Light years away.

Sometimes, I'm not really sure about the goodness of God.

A poem that has been haunting Saint Marty all day . . .

As It Is

by:  Dorianne Laux

The man I love hates technology, hates
that he’s forced to use it: telephones
and microfilm, air conditioning,
car radios and the occasional fax.
He wishes he lived in the old world,
sitting on a stump carving a clothespin
or a spoon. He wants to go back, slip
like lint into his great-great-grandfather’s
pocket, reborn as a pilgrim, a peasant,
a dirt farmer hoeing his uneven rows.
He walks when he can, through the hills
behind his house, his dogs panting beside him
like small steam engines. He’s delighted
by the sun’s slow and simple
descent, the complicated machinery
of his own body. I would have loved him
in any era, in any dark age, I would take him
into the twilight and unwind him, slide
my fingers through his hair and pull him
to his knees. As it is, this afternoon, late
in the twentieth century, I sit on a chair
in the kitchen with my keys in my lap, pressing
the black button on the answering machine
over and over, listening to his message,
his voice strung along the wires outside my window
where the birds balance themselves
and stare off into the trees, thinking
even in the farthest future, in the most
distant universe, I would have recognized
this voice, refracted, as it would be, like light
from some small, uncharted star.