June 7, 2026: “Mary’s Argument,” Open House, “Pool Table at a Poetry Reading”

It has been a hot minute since I last blogged.  Forgive me.  I’ve been distracted by my son’s high school graduation, among other things.

Students graduate from high school every year.  In my time on this planet, I have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of young people in caps and gowns, fairly glowing like newly formed stars.  I, myself, have graduated four times (high school once, college thrice).  Graduation is as normal (and predictable) as dandelions or sunrises.  It’s easy to become immune to the excitement and beauty of graduations.

Marie Howe writes about the uncommon ordinary . . .

Mary’s Argument

“Let what you said be done to me” (Luke 1:38)

by: Marie Howe

To lead the uncommon life is not so bad.

There is an edge we come to count on

when all the normal signs don’t speak,

a startled vigilance that keeps us waking

to watch the moon, the peculiar stars;

the usual, underfoot, no more a solid comfort

than a rock that might move as a turtle moves,

so slowly only the nervous feel the sudden bump

of the familiar giving way to unrequested astonishment.

As for a small time, the sheer cliff of everything

we never knew can rise in front of us

like the warm dark, where starlight

has its constant conception, where the idea of turtle

blinked and was: a wry joke, an intricate affection.

Yes, as Howe writes, we all become a little too used to the normal signs of life.  I can’t remember the last time I actually stopped to admire a lawn filled with golden dandelions or gotten drunk on the perfume of lilacs.  These things are so ordinary that we don’t really stop to think about them for what they really are:  miracles.  

This weekend, we had our son’s open house for graduation.  Again, I know it’s just one open house in a sea of open houses happening in the next few weeks.  We all get the announcements from our friends’ kids as June approaches, and we all show up with money-stuffed cards and eat the ham and rolls.  When spring arrives, open house season isn’t far off.

When you think about it, though, it really is amazing:  all these young people flooding the world with hope and excitement.  They’re like rare orchids that only blossom once every 17 or 18 years.  And we get to be there to witness it.

I could never have pulled off our son’s open house without the help of my wife’s family.  They’re the ones who volunteered to bring food, help decorate, and honor our son’s achievements.  My wife’s little sister (I’ve known her for so long, she’s my little sister, too) arranged the rental of the church hall and spent several hours Friday night and all day Saturday helping us.  My wife’s older sister made a quilt for our son out of a bunch of his old shirts and pajamas.  And my wife’s cousin made food for the potluck.  It was a huge team effort.

Me?  Well, I spent Thursday and Friday putting together decorations, mowing the lawn, cleaning our house, and grocery shopping.  Of course, I sort of over-planned everything, as I am wont to do.  We have lots of food left over.  My son was thrilled with the whole event, even though our friend Kerry beat him at cards.  (He was sure he was going to win)

I guess what I’m trying to say with this post is that I’m supremely grateful for all of the people who helped make this weekend (and my son’s graduation festivities) so meaningful.  They’re all miracles, and I’m blessed to have them in my life.

Saint Marty finished a poem this afternoon at the laundromat (because, even in the midst of miracles, there are still dirty clothes to wash) . . .

Pool Table at a Poetry Reading

by: Martin Achatz

covered in books, each poet

hawking wares like an old town

square where farmers gathered

on Saturday mornings to sell

milk, eggs, tomatoes red as infection,

maybe potatoes and bell peppers, too.

The poets chalk their cues, eye

the green felt.  Sonnet corner pocket

one says, makes the shot easy

as a sneeze.  Villanelle middle pocket

the same poet says, but misses,

scratches another poet’s haiku.  One 

by one, the table empties until

all that’s left is an elegy for River

Phoenix, who overdosed on Halloween,

died on a sidewalk outside the Viper Room.

The elegy convulses, goes into respiratory

distress before the ambulance arrives.

The poets try to revive it, press their lips

to its stanzas, blow breath into each

line, massage the nouns like stillborn chicks

in a nest of shell fragments, desperate 

as Victor Frankenstein for signs 

of life.  The rest of the poems start singing

“Stand By Me” a cappella in the pockets

as the elegy is lifted from the table,

slid into a folder of rough drafts

that all died way too young, before

they had a chance to ripen. 

April 21: "Dogma," State of the World, "Catechism"

Billy Collins takes us to church . . .

Dogma

by:  Billy Collins

I might be an atheist

were it not

for all the tall angels

and the pudgy cherubs 

in the silvery clouds

presiding over all those miracles.

This is a good poem for a Sunday.

Looking at the state of the world at the moment (wars and climate change and politicians hawking Bibles), it's hard not to question the existence of an Almighty.  How can a Higher Power let all this shit happen?

Gone are the days when angels would sometimes knock on your front door and ask for some hospitality (dinner and a warm bed).  Lepers aren't walking down streets, ringing bells and shouting "Unclean!  Unclean!"  The blind don't see, and the lame don't walk.  Miracles just don't happen with great frequency in this day and age.  Or do they?

Here's the thing--and I think this is the point Billy Collins is making with today's poem--angels and miracles are all around us.  Every day.  That hasn't changed since baby Moses went for his little boat ride in the bulrushes.  Modern people have just become immune to the holy weird of the world.  For example, I saw a wild turkey on the side of the road today, and I ate a lavender vanilla bean gelato for lunch.  Tonight, I picked up a poet at the airport and drove her to her hotel.  This poet has won, among other accolades, the American Book Award.  Miracle upon miracle upon miracle.

I've had angels in my life, as well.  These angels have gone out of their ways to help me at various times when I've felt irredeemable.  My friend, Helen, was one of those angels.  She believed in the inherent goodness of everyone she met.  Every day was an adventure in wonder for her, from the deer feeding in her backyard to the raspberries growing along the side of a path.  She lived in the realm of the earthly sacred.  And Helen believed in me.

So, Saint Marty agrees with Billy Collins:  angels and cherubs and miracles, oh my!

Catechism

by:  Martin Achatz

I learned to recite

the "Our Father" in Latin

when I was a kid,

so I speak guilt

in two languages.

July 9: "Logos," Miracles, Bishop Baraga

Mary Oliver on miracles . . . 

Logos

by:  Mary Oliver

Why wonder about the loaves and the fishes?

If you say the right words, the wine expands.

If you say them with love

and the felt ferocity of that love

and the felt necessity of that love, 

the fish explode into many.

Imagine him, speaking,

and don't worry about what is reality, 

or what is plain, or what is mysterious.

If you were there, it was all those things.

If you can imagine, it is all those things.

Eat, drink, be happy.

Accept the miracle.

Accept, too, each spoken word

spoken with love.

I spend a good deal of time in the classroom talking about ethos, pathos, and logos with my writing students.  Ethos is a rhetorical appeal that relies on the credibility and trustworthiness of the writer.  Pathos is an appeal to the emotions--basically getting your readers emotionally invested in your message (through compassion or anger or pity, for example).  Logos is the exact opposite of pathos.  Logos is an appeal to reason and logic and intellect.

Mary Oliver isn't really trying to engage in a rational debate in this poem.  She's talking about the Biblical narrative of the loaves and fishes, where Jesus feeds five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fish.  If you are casting around for an explanation of this miracle, you're missing the point of Oliver's poem and the gospel accounts.  The disciples accepted the miracle without question.  Oliver pretty much backs up the disciples.  She tells her readers to just "Accept the miracle."

I know that's difficult for a lot of people.  Back in Biblical times, it was taken for granted that angels walked the Earth and blindness could be cured with mud and a little spit.  Logos didn't even enter the equation.  It was mostly pathos and ethos.  Nowadays, pathos and ethos are left to poets and artists and musicians.  Logos is the realm of scientists and engineers.  Miracles belong to people who dance with rattlesnakes, blind with desperation.

When my sister, Sally, was diagnosed with terminal lymphoma of the brain, I prayed for a miracle.  I worked in healthcare for close to 20 years, so I knew all about prognoses and diagnoses.  When I first saw images from Sally's CAT and PET scans, the logos side of my brain knew immediately that my sister had little chance of surviving.  But ethos and pathos wouldn't let me completely abandon hope for recovery.

My family contacted the local Catholic diocese, and a few days later, our parish priest arrived at my parents' house where Sally was under hospice care.  Father Larry brought a relic from Bishop Baraga, a Slovenian Roman Catholic missionary who was the first Bishop of Marquette from 1857 to 1868.  Baraga's cause for sainthood is currently under consideration by the Vatican.

Father Larry brought one of Bishop Baraga's stoles and anointed my sister with it.  Then, we recited a family rosary.  It was a powerful moment, with hope hovering in the room like a trapped sparrow, beating at the windows of all our hearts.  That night, everyone in my family believed in miracles.

About a week or so later (maybe less), Sally took a last, deep breath one morning and died, surrounded by her family and closest friends, and it was a miracle.  Not the miracle we where looking for, but a miracle nonetheless.  Each person in the room lifting Sally up, sending her on her final journey with gratitude and grief for the time we all had with her.

No, my sister didn't miraculously jump out of bed to whip up a pot of her spaghetti sauce.  No, she didn't miraculously open her eyes and tell us to stop being babies.  And no, the room didn't miraculously smell like blooming roses when she passed.

If you are a logos person, you probably won't experience anything miraculous in your lifetime.  Because you're too focused on comprehending and explaining, instead of just following Oliver's simple directive:  "Accept . . . each spoken word / spoken with love."

Saint Marty gives thanks tonight for each spoken word.  Each soft breath.  Each person he loves and who loves him.

December 29-31: Sing With Peace, New Year's Eve, In the Midst of Death

 Merton has an epiphany . . . 

I had my thesis to type out, and a lot of books to read, and I was thinking of preparing an article on Crashaw which perhaps I would send to T. S. Eliot for his Criterion. I did not know that Criterion had printed its last issue, and that Eliot’s reaction to the situation that so depressed me was to fold up his magazine. 

The days went on and the radios returned to their separate and individual murmuring, not to be regimented back into their appalling shout for yet another year. September, as I think, must have been more than half gone. 

I borrowed Father Leahy’s life of Hopkins from the library. It was a rainy day. I had been working in the library in the morning. I had gone to buy a thirty-five-cent lunch at one of those little pious kitchens on Broadway— the one where Professor Gerig, of the graduate school of French, sat daily in silence with his ancient, ailing mother, over a very small table, eating his Brussels sprouts. Later in the afternoon, perhaps about four, I would have to go down to Central Park West and give a Latin lesson to a youth who was sick in bed, and who ordinarily came to the tutoring school run by my landlord, on the ground floor of the house where I lived. 

I walked back to my room. The rain was falling gently on the empty tennis courts across the street, and the huge old domed library stood entrenched in its own dreary greyness, arching a cyclops eyebrow at South Field. 

I took up the book about Gerard Manley Hopkins. The chapter told of Hopkins at Balliol, at Oxford. He was thinking of becoming a Catholic. He was writing letters to Cardinal Newman (not yet a cardinal) about becoming a Catholic. 

All of a sudden, something began to stir within me, something began to push me, to prompt me. It was a movement that spoke like a voice. 

"What are you waiting for?” it said. “Why are you sitting here? Why do you still hesitate? You know what you ought to do? Why don’t you do it?” 

I stirred in the chair, I lit a cigarette, looked out the window at the rain, tried to shut the voice up. “Don’t act on impulses,” I thought. “This is crazy. This is not rational. Read your book.” 

Hopkins was writing to Newman, at Birmingham, about his indecision. 

“What are you waiting for?” said the voice within me again. “Why are you sitting there? It is useless to hesitate any longer. Why don’t you get up and go?” 

I got up and walked restlessly around the room. “It’s absurd,” I thought. “Anyway, Father Ford would not be there at this time of day. I would only be wasting time.” 

Hopkins had written to Newman, and Newman had replied to him, telling him to come and see him at Birmingham. 

Suddenly, I could bear it no longer. I put down the book, and got into my raincoat, and started down the stairs. I went out into the street. I crossed over, and walked along by the grey wooden fence, towards Broadway, in the light rain. 

And then everything inside me began to sing—to sing with peace, to sing with strength, and to sing with conviction. 

I had nine blocks to walk. Then I turned the corner of 121st Street, and the brick church and presbytery were before me. I stood in the doorway and rang the bell and waited. 

When the maid opened the door, I said: 

“May I see Father Ford, please?” 

“But Father Ford is out.” 

I thought: well, it is not a waste of time, anyway. And I asked when she expected him back. I would come back later, I thought. 

The maid closed the door. I stepped back into the street. And then I saw Father Ford coming around the corner from Broadway. He approached, with his head down, in a rapid, thoughtful walk. I went to meet him and said: 

“Father, may I speak to you about something?” 

“Yes,” he said, looking up, surprised. “Yes, sure, come into the house.” 

We sat in the little parlor by the door. And I said: “Father, I want to become a Catholic.” 

It's a profound moment of revelation for Merton.  Everyone experiences times like this in their lives--where the fog lifts and the road forward becomes clear. While Merton has been toying with the notion of conversion for quite a while, he has never given voice to it--confessed it--before.  He does so now to a Catholic priest.  Even if he backslides, he can never unspeak these words.  He will never be the same again.

It is New Years Eve.  An evening that invites reflection and resolution.  People take stock of the previous 365 days.  Think about failures and successes, losses and joys.  This year has been rife with struggles for everyone across the globe.  Unless you are a resident of Antarctica, you have been somehow affected by COVID-19, directly or indirectly.  Nobody on the planet will ever be the same again.

For the first seven months of this year, I worked in healthcare.  I sat at hospital entrances, taking names and temperatures.  Screening patients for symptoms.  Answering phone calls from frightened family members.  Worrying on a daily basis about carrying coronavirus home to my family.  

Since March, my social circle has pretty much been limited to about three or four people--my wife, daughter, son, and daughter's boyfriend.  That's it.  My interaction with family members outside my household has been pretty much limited to six-foot distant conversations from doorways.  An outside barbecue or two.  One small birthday gathering.

Meanwhile, the citizens of my country were dealing with a leader who was becoming increasingly unhinged.  Who claimed the pandemic was nothing worse than a normal flu season, and that the virus would simply vanish in warm weather.  He criticized scientists and medical doctors, and encouraged people to defy the most basic of safety measures--facemasks and social distancing.  The result?  344,000 deaths in the United States.

In addition, racial tensions spilled into the streets, and politics edged toward fascism and dictatorship.  

And, for the last month of the year, I have been in quarantine with my family, with both of my kids contracting COVID-19.  Tonight, on this night of looking forward and back, I give thanks that my daughter and son have recovered, and my wife and I tested negative.

During this month of isolation, I have been blessed so many times by the kindness of friends.  Some dropped off groceries.  Others brought dog treats.  Dinners.  Snacks.  Cards in the mail.  Text messages.  It has been a lesson, for me, in the inherent goodness of people.  

So, I sit here at the brink of 2021, counting some of the blessings of 2020:

• I started a new job that pays me to organize poetry readings and concerts and theatricals and fundraisers.  This isn't work for me.  It's earning money for dreaming.
• I got a beautiful new puppy that fills my house with love and laughter every day.
• My beautiful wife got a new job, as well.
• My beautiful daughter was promoted to a supervisor.
• My beautiful mother fell out of bed and broke her hip  She had hip replacement and is currently a resident at a nursing home.  She contracted COVID, but her symptoms remained mild, and she never lost her appetite or smile.
• My beautiful sister, Rose, who has Down Syndrome, ended up in the ICU with heart issues.  She's on medication now, doing physical therapy.  Home.
• I published some poems and started a podcast.
• I reconnected with a beautiful friend who lives downstate, and we have become writing buddies.  Just last night, we Zoomed and drank and wrote.  And drank some more.

I could go on.  And on.  There's a saying from the Book of Common Prayer:  "In the midst of life, we are in death."  For 2020, I think that the saying is a little different:  "In the midst of death, we are in life."  In the face of so much suffering and division, there have been miracles, as well.  Things to celebrate.  Yes, we lost Sean Connery this year.  But Betty White is still alive and kickin'.  Yes, my 12-year-old son ended up in the ER this fall because he was having ideas of self-harm.  But tonight he's playing Family Feud and Taboo with us, laughing and joking.

As the clock counts down to the first hour of 2021, I celebrate all of the miracles of 2020.  There have been many.  Yes, a year from now, ten years from now, 25 years, the newspapers and history books will be filled stories of overrun hospitals, body counts, racial protests turning violent.  Pictures of empty churches.  Masked families.  Angry, MAGA-hat wearing domestic terrorists.

Here is what Saint Marty will remember about this year:  tonight, with his family.  Everyone laughing.  Healthy.  Hopeful.  Together.

July 18: An Infinite Being, Sugarloaf Mountain, Neowise

Thomas Merton, the 17-year-old philosopher . . .

Here in this study I edited the school magazine which had fallen into my hands that autumn, and read T. S. Eliot, and even tried to write a poem myself about Elpenor, in Homer, getting drunk and falling off the roof of a palace.  And his soul fled into the shades of hell.  And the rest of the time I played Duke Ellington's records or got into arguments about politics and religion.

All those vain and absurd arguments!  My advice to an ordinary religious man, supposing anyone were to desire my advice on this point, would be to avoid all arguments about religion, and especially about the existence of God.  However to those who know some philosophy I would recommend the study of Duns Scotus' proofs for the actual existence of an Infinite Being, which are given in the Second Distinction of the First Book of the Opus Oxoniense--in Latin that is hard enough to give you many headaches.  It is getting to be rather generally admitted that, for accuracy and depth and scope, this is the most perfect and complete and thorough proof for the existence of God that has ever been worked out by any man.

I doubt if it would have done much good to bring these considerations before me in those days, when I was turning seventeen, and thought I knew all about philosophy without ever having learned any.  However, I did have a desire to learn.  I was attracted to philosophy.  It was an attraction the Headmaster had worked hard to implant in our souls but there was, and could be, no course in philosophy at Oakham.  I was left to my own devices.

I remember once mentioning all this to Tom, my guardian.  We were walking out of his front door, into Harley Street, and I told him of my desire to study philosophy, and to know the philosophers.

He, being a doctor, told me to leave philosophy alone:  there were few things, he told me, that were a greater waste of time.

I, myself, have never taken an official course in philosophy, although, through my schooling, I have read Socrates and Plato and Aristotle and Kant and Descartes and Voltaire, among others.  And I will admit that I struggle with most philosophical reading.  Its density and abstraction hinder me.  I do much better with the concrete rather than the abstract in most cases.  I guess that's why I became a poet.  Big ideas and emotions grounded in image and metaphor.  For me, that's the best way to understand life.

Last night, I went comet chasing again.  This time, I enlisted my entire family in the endeavor.  My wife, son, daughter, and daughter's boyfriend joined me this time.  At around 11 p.m., we piled into my car and drove 35 minutes to the base of Sugarloaf Mountain, a popular tourist hiking spot with a fairly well-kept trail, including several flights of stairs to aid in ascent and descent.  We started climbing around 11:50 p.m.

On our way up, we could see the flashlights of other Neowise-seekers bobbing through the trees in front of us, some going up, some coming down.  One man, as he passed us, said, "You're in for quite a show."  Because of the dark, we took our time, not wanting to risk injury.  We could hear creatures in the dark, saw a deer standing several hundred yards away, staring at our strange parade, its eyes reflecting the beams of our torches, as the British call them.

When we finally reached the last flight of steps that led to the top of Sugarloaf, I could hear voices and see dark shapes moving above me.  In the daytime, when you reach the summit, you are rewarded with an unimpeded view of sky and water and forest.  Lake Superior stretches out to the horizon on one side, and lush green evergreen crawls to the horizon on the other.  It's a breathtaking sight.

Last night, however, as I stepped onto the top of the mountain, my head was pointed to the heavens.  I tried to orient myself, searching for the Big Dipper.  I knew that, once I located that constellation, I could easily find Neowise.  It took only a moment.  The sky was milky with stars, and there was the handle and pan of the Dipper.  I imagined a stream of water cascading from the pan in an arc (not hard to do with the sound of Superior's surf in the dark below).  At the base of that arc was Neowise, a smudge of powdery light.

After almost a full week of Neowise hunting, I was exhilarated.  It was a moment almost 7,000 years in the making.  I stood there, mouth open (not something I recommend, as I swallowed some bug that flew through my lips).  There were clustered groups around me.  One had a camera on a tripod, taking a slow-exposure picture of the comet.  Further away, a group of college-age kids, emitting the skunky scent of marijuana. had set up a large telescope.  They were taking turns staring into the eyepiece.

Staring up, I felt connected to something much larger than myself.  The last time Neowise appeared in the sky was roughly 5,000 years before the birth of Jesus Christ.  The wheel had just been invented.  Farming was a fairly new innovation--having only started in Mesopotamia around two millennia prior.  The woolly mammoth could have seen Neowise, but not any of the pharaohs.  The Egyptian civilization wouldn't appear for another 1,800 years.  No pyramids.  No mummies.  Hammurabi and his code weren't even a twinkle in the universe's eyes.  The Trojan War hadn't been fought.  Homer wasn't singing.  And Rome wouldn't be built for almost 5,000 years.

And there I stood last night, in the year 2020, in the middle of a global pandemic, gaping at Neowise the way, I imagine, those mammoths 7,000 years ago never did.  They simply went about the business of eating, sleeping, moving, and mating.  Meanwhile, that smear of comet light kept climbing away and away.  The mammoths disappeared, and humankind took over.  Building and advancing and polluting and warring and pretty much making a big mess of the world.

It's difficult, standing on top of a mountain under the stars not to feel a little insignificant, to ask yourself questions like, "Does God exist?" and "Are we all alone here?"  In my blog posts, I've been honest over the last year about my personal struggles.  To think that everything that I'm going through is random, without meaning, pushes me to the edge of a pretty steep existential cliff.

Yet, Neowise is up there and has been heading my way for thousands of years.  Last night, on top of Sugarloaf, was a confirmation that miracles still exist.  They are bright scoops of light in a dark universe.  They show up when you least expect, and they fill you with a mammoth wonder.  They make you believe you are not alone.  There are comet pilgrims all around, seeking the same thing you are:  love and happiness.

And for that, Saint Marty gives thanks.

September 4: Emergency, Difficult Decisions, Miracles

Emergency alarms are sounding . . .

"Emergency!  Emergency!" blared the klaxons throughout Magrathea.  "Hostile ship has landed on planet.  Armed intruders in section SA.  Defense stations, defense stations!"

Sometimes, emergencies can be huge--armed intruders.  Sometimes emergencies can be small--tomato sauce on your favorite shirt.  Nonetheless, when something bad happens or is about to happen, it can seem overwhelming.  Like the end of the world.  Some emergencies are simply out of our control.  Hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards.  And some emergencies--personal, private emergencies--force us to make difficult decisions with lasting implications.

I am not a person who rushes things.  I tend to ruminate.  Brood.  Dwell.  If I'm faced with a difficult decision, I prefer to take my time and think about it.  A lot.  I have been thinking about a certain decision a lot recently.  (No, I will not go into detail about this decision.  Suffice to say, it's a difficult decision that is causing me sleepless nights.)  It's a decision I do not want to make, but, over the last few weeks/months, I've been slowly backed into it.

I hate being in my current position.  No matter what choice I make, it will be painful, and I will feel like the bad guy for a very long time.  I don't like being the bad guy.  I like being the loving guy.  The funny guy.  The guy you can count on, no matter what.  I want to be known, in the end, as a good friend, a good brother, a good son, a good father, and a good husband.  If I'm also known as a good poet, even better. 

I've been praying a lot.  Meditating a lot.  I'm not done praying and meditating.  I'm hoping to see some kind of miracle happen.  A good, happy miracle.  I believe in miracles, despite living in a pretty cynical world.  I have been the recipient of miracles, in just the last few weeks, thanks to people who love me.

So, here's to miracles and difficult decisions this evening.  Saint Marty is hoping that a miracle happens soon, so he doesn't have to make a difficult decision.

One of the biggest miracles in my life . . .

October 24: Great Thought, "The Neverending Story," Miracles

Sir James Jeans, British astronomer and physicist, suggested that the universe was beginning to look more like a great thought than a great machine.  Humanists seized on the expression, but it was hardly news.  We knew, looking around, that a thought branches and leafs, a tree comes to a conclusion.  But the question of who is thinking the thought is more fruitful than the question of who made the machine, for a machinist can of course wipe his hands and leave, and his simple machine still hums; but if the thinker's attention strays for a minute, his simplest thought ceases altogether.  And, as I have stressed, the place where we so incontrovertibly find ourselves, whether thought or machine, is at least not in any way simple.

Such an interesting argument.  Is the universe some great machine put into motion by God like some divine mechanic firing up a generator?  Or is it a notion, like Einstein's relativity or Hawking's black holes, spawned in the unknowable mind of the Supreme Being?  In the former, God can take a break, walk away from his creation as it hums along.  In the latter, if God takes a break, the universe ceases to be.

I don't know why this particular paragraph jumped out at me tonight.  I have been sitting in my university office, lesson planning, searching for teaching videos.  I have not spoken to or seen another person for close to three hours.  That kind of isolation makes me a little reflective.  Paranoid even.  For example, I just had this vision of God "taking a break" and the world outside my closed office door simply vanishing, like The Nothing eating up The Neverending Story.  When I open the door, I will be confronted by a void.  Emptiness.

Yes, I get in weird states when I work for extended periods of time by myself.  It's productive, but it also fuels the Stephen King lobe of my brain sometimes.  I know that there is still a hallway outside my door.  I just heard a couple of graduate students talking and laughing.  However, the idea of the universe being a machine does not appeal to me; I don't relish the thought of creation running on autopilot.  I prefer a more hand's on vision of the universe--God always attentive, tinkering, creating, throwing a miracle at us every once in a while.

I haven't experienced any miracles today.  Then again, I haven't been around a whole lot of people.  Perhaps, when I go to pick up my daughter from the dance studio, I will encounter something miraculous.  A unicorn crossing the street in front of my car.  A rainbow circling the moon.  A teenage daughter who is actually in a good mood.  It could happen.  Bob Dylan said, " . . . I've always thought there's a superior power, that this is not the real world and that there's a world to come."

Saint Marty just hopes that, in the world to come, teenage daughters make their beds and are nice to their little brothers.

I don't think I've ever been an agnostic. I've always thought there's a superior power, that this is not the real world and that there's a world to come.
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/b/bob_dylan_4.html

I don't think I've ever been an agnostic. I've always thought there's a superior power, that this is not the real world and that there's a world to come.
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/b/bob_dylan_4.html

The Nothing is right outside the door

July 26: Miracles, Camille T. Dungy, "Requiem"

As I approach the anniversary of my sister's death, I sometimes find it difficult to be positive.  I have been trying to focus on joy and happiness, to greater and lesser success at times.  In my previous post tonight, I talked about miracles.

My sister was a miracle.  One of the smartest people I have ever known.  Generous--she bought me a new car when I graduated from my Master's degree program.  Drove me down to Kalamazoo when I started in a PhD program, hauling a trailer full of my crap.  She supported me in everything that I ever did.

I know she wasn't perfect.  She knew I wasn't perfect.  Yet, we accepted each other's failings.  A couple years ago, as we were sitting in her office at the end of a long work day, she told me that she admired my strength in dark times.  My sister wasn't a warm, fuzzy person.  Didn't hug much.  But she cared deeply, loved deeply.

Saint Marty believes in miracles.

Requiem

by:  Camille T. Dungy

Sing the mass—
light upon me washing words
now that I am gone. 

The sky was a hot, blue sheet the summer breeze fanned

out and over the town. I could have lived forever

under that sky. Forgetting where I was,

I looked left, not right, crossed into a street

and stepped in front of the bus that ended me.

Will you believe me when I tell you it was beautiful—

my left leg turned to uselessness and my right shoe flung

some distance down the road? Will you believe me

when I tell you I had never been so in love

with anyone as I was, then, with everyone I saw?

The way an age-worn man held his wife’s shaking arm,

supporting the weight that seemed to sing from the heart

she clutched. Knowing her eyes embraced the pile

that was me, he guided her sacked body through the crowd.

And the way one woman began a fast the moment she looked

under the wheel. I saw her swear off decadence.

I saw her start to pray. You see, I was so beautiful

the woman sent to clean the street used words

like police tape to keep back a young boy

seconds before he rounded the grisly bumper.

The woman who cordoned the area feared my memory

would fly him through the world on pinions of passion

much as, later, the sight of my awful beauty pulled her down

to tears when she pooled my blood with water

and swiftly, swiftly washed my stains away.

January 2: An Oracle, Miracles, Kim Addonizio, "New Year's Day," Confessions of Saint Marty

When I slide under a barbed-wire fence, cross a field, and run over a sycamore trunk felled across the water, I'm on a little island shaped like a tear in the middle of Tinker Creek.  On one side of the creek is a steep forested bank; the water is swift and deep on that side of the island.  On the other side is the level field I walked through next to the steers' pasture; the water between the field and the island is shallow and sluggish.  In summer's low water, flags and bulrushes grow along a series of shallow pools cooled by the lazy current.  Water striders patrol the surface film, crayfish hump along the silt bottom eating filth, frogs shout and glare, and shiners and small bream hide among roots from the sulky green heron's eye.  I come to this island every month of the year.  I walk around it, stopping and staring, or I straddle the sycamore log over the creek, curling my legs out of the water in winter, trying to read.  Today I sit on dry grass at the end of the island by the slower side of the creek.  I'm drawn to this spot.  I come to it as to an oracle; I return to it as a man years later will seek out the battlefield where he lost a leg or an arm.

Annie Dillard is an observer.  She sees with a scientist's gaze and a poet's wonder.  Tinker Creek is filled with tiny miracles of nature.  Water striders and crayfish and shiners.  Sun striking water.  Clouds boiling on windless days.  It's a place that makes Dillard stop and reflect.  A New Year's Day made manifest in stone and soil and light and creation.  Every moment about strangeness and newness and oldness.

Yes, I am still in the meditative state of New Year's Eve/Day.  Thinking about the past and wondering about the future.  I am trying to approach 2016 with excitement and hope.  There are blessings headed my way.  I just need to be more aware of them.  I need to be like Annie Dillard in a way.  No, I don't mean I need to live a cabin in the woods and go for hikes three times a day.  I just need to keep my eyes open.  See the miracles.

I'm not much for New Year's resolutions.  Resolutions are promises easily broken, lost after a week or two of reality.  So, I am not calling my miracle-seeking a resolution.  It's a change in attitude or state of mind.  A shift from darkness to light.  I feel much more comfortable with that description.  It seems more doable.  Sort of like saying that I'm going to cut back on drinking Diet Mountain Dew without setting any clear or measurable goal.

And I need to remember that, even in the dark times of life, there are still stars in the heavens, moonlight in the trees.  Loss, I guess, can be a way of making room for blessings.  Pain can be a reminder of how precious life and health and happiness are.  That's what Tinker Creek is all about, I think.

Saint Marty has a New Year's poem for you on this second day of January, 2016.  Find a miracle in your life today.

New Year's Day

by:  Kim Addonizio

The rain this morning falls   

on the last of the snow

and will wash it away. I can smell   

the grass again, and the torn leaves

being eased down into the mud.   

The few loves I’ve been allowed

to keep are still sleeping

on the West Coast. Here in Virginia

I walk across the fields with only   

a few young cows for company.

Big-boned and shy,

they are like girls I remember

from junior high, who never   

spoke, who kept their heads

lowered and their arms crossed against   

their new breasts. Those girls

are nearly forty now. Like me,   

they must sometimes stand

at a window late at night, looking out   

on a silent backyard, at one

rusting lawn chair and the sheer walls   

of other people’s houses.

They must lie down some afternoons   

and cry hard for whoever used

to make them happiest,   

and wonder how their lives

have carried them

this far without ever once

explaining anything. I don’t know   

why I’m walking out here

with my coat darkening

and my boots sinking in, coming up

with a mild sucking sound   

I like to hear. I don’t care

where those girls are now.   

Whatever they’ve made of it

they can have. Today I want   

to resolve nothing.

I only want to walk

a little longer in the cold

blessing of the rain,   

and lift my face to it.

Confessions of Saint Marty

June 16: Building Weeping, Miracles, Sally Wen Mao, "Monstera Deliciosa"

In one slip of a second, anything seemed possible--had the moon risen and started to sing, had pyramids appeared over the Chrysler building weeping, Ives would have been no more surprised.

Ives has just had a near death experience.  As he walks the streets of Manhattan, he starts having visions of God's goodness.  Four colored winds spinning in the sky.  The sun, glowing red and huge.  Car horns sounding like celestial trumpets.  As the above passage says, anything seems possible.

I've been contemplating miracles recently.  Ives thinks of his near-death experiences as some kind of divine vision granted to him.  I'm not so sure that's accurate.  I think most people go through their days with blinders on.  Ives' blinders have simply been removed for a little while.  He's seeing the world from a God's-eye-view. 

I think I'm a lot like the blindered Ives.  Driving to work, talking to patients, eating lunch, walking to my car at the end of the day, I probably miss more miracles than contained in the gospels.  For instance, near the medical center where I work, there's a bike path in the woods.  I know there are albino deer in that forest.  One night, as I was leaving the university after teaching an evening class, I drove by a cemetery.  Near the cemetery fence was a family of deer.  When the headlights of my car spotlighted them, the deer leaped into the darkness, hurdling headstones and hedges like souls racing to heaven.

Everyday miracles.  I need to open my eyes and look around more often.  Maybe I'll see the moon singing or the university clock tower weeping.  Who knows?  The whole world is full of wonder.  Sure, I'm sort of stuck in a swamp of worry right now.  But I know that my very existence--my lungs' habit of breathing, my heart's habit of beating, my pores' habit of sweating--all of the things that keep me alive are impossible miracles of creation.

Sally Wen Mao's poem for tonight is about one of those miracles of nature that most people don't even stop to notice.

Saint Marty is taking some time tonight to give thanks for miracles.

Monstera Deliciosa

by:  Sally Wen Mao

I'm a monster because I poison the children.
They dance around me and my fronds flutter
with holes.  They invite:  Eat my fanged fruit.

Each scale will peel off easy, but if you eat it
unripe, it will steal your voice.  Your gums
will blister little stars.  You'll vomit, swell, tremble.

When ripe, it is sublime.  Better than banana,
soft mango, sweeter than wild yellow rambutan
coated in syrup.  It only takes one year.  Bite.

Bon appetit!

August 19: Be on the Watch, Tragedy, Prayer for Ferguson

On Sunday, the church was full.  The minister explained the miracle.  He said that the words on the spider's web proved the human beings must always be on the watch for the coming of wonders.

I've written about this subject before.  Everyday wonders.  The minister is right.  Human beings should walk around with their eyes open, on the lookout for miracles in things like spider webs or rain storms or foggy mornings.  Charlotte's trick reminds the readers that small things can be extraordinary.


There's been a lot of tragedy in the past ten days in Ferguson, Missouri, starting with the shooting death of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson.  Tragic.  There have been demonstrations, peaceful and fiery.  People are angry.  People are sad.  People want justice.  All of it started with horrifying bloodshed.  It continues with nightly gunfire and looting.  Violence begetting violence, if you'll excuse the Biblical language.

I'm wondering where the meaning is.  I'm waiting for some kind of miracle to come out of all this tragedy.  I've seen news reports of police officers walking with protestors, expressing the same horror and sorrow.  This morning, I saw Michael Brown's parents interviewed.  They looked frozen with grief and anger, but they've called for peace, an end to violence, despite their loss.

I discussed the whole situation with my friend, Matt, last night.  He is rightfully outraged.  When I expressed my reservation at condemning the police officer, Darren Williams, Matt called him a murderer.  Matt said Officer Wilson forfeited any chance of compassion when he fired six bullets into Michael Brown's body (two into his head).  "I don't care if his father abused him or he grew up in a slum," Matt said.  "He's a fucking killer."

That's the dilemma.  Tempering outrage with understanding.  Moving past violence toward harmony.  Martin Luther King marched for peace and equality.  Violence ended his life.  Yet, it's not his death we focus on.  We focus on the change he wrought in the United States.  The fact that, in Ferguson, it's not just African Americans who are raising their voices in protest.  It's people of all races and genders.  That's Martin Luther King's legacy.

So, let's all pray for the people of Ferguson, Missouri, tonight and this week.  For Michael Brown's family.  And, yes, for Darren Wilson and his family.  For the protestors.  For the police officers.  For peace and justice.  Let's pray for the miracle.

Saint Marty believes that Martin Luther King's dream is still alive.

Let's keep our eyes open for the miracle, folks

January 25: Miracles, How to Spin a Web, New Cartoon

Yes, I'm going to talk about miracles again today.

I've been talking about my sister in Utah who's been very sick.  After ignoring an infected tooth for over seven years, she developed multi-system sepsis.  The doctors have been running all kinds of tests on her over the last few days.  She saw a dentist and facial surgeon yesterday.

I've admitted that my relationship with my sister is, at best, strained.  We haven't been close for a long time.  It's not that I don't love her.  I do.  However, distance is a good thing for us.  If we lived in the same town, we probably wouldn't be speaking to each other at all.

My sister's illness has made me regret the rift that has developed between us.  I haven't allowed our bad blood to be passed on to my kids.  My son and daughter love their aunt and cousins.  That's something of which I'm proud.  And it's a little bit of a miracle, too.  There was a time when I wanted simply to cut all ties with them.  I'm not sure we will ever be close again.  It would take an act of God for that to happen.

But God can do some pretty remarkable things.  Dr. Dorian, in Charlotte's Web, tells Mrs. Arable:

"...A young spider knows how to spin a web without any instructions from anybody.  Don't you regard that as a miracle?"

Dr. Dorian is right.  Miracles are everyday occurrences.  Spiderwebs.  Lightning storms.  Hummingbirds.  Snowstorms.  Human beings are just too busy to notice them.  Maybe animals really do speak to us, and we're too busy to listen to them.

My sister is being sent home from the hospital this evening.  Her heart wasn't harmed.  Neither was her brain.  Her jaw bone and muscles are fine.  A dentist pulled the crown in her mouth and cleared out the entire area.  She's going to be on massive intravenous antibiotics for several weeks. But she's going to be fine.

That's a miracle.

And Saint Marty thanks God for it.

Now, to lighten things up a little bit...

Confessions of Saint Marty

August 23: Off the Cuff

Usually, when I sit down to type a post, I have some idea of what my subject will be.  This afternoon, I have no idea.  That's right.  I'm doing this blog off-the-cuff.  If I make no sense or you think I'm rambling on about absolutely nothing at all, you are probably correct.  I am not going to make sense, and I will be rambling a great deal.

The power outage this morning was caused by a squirrel getting into some kind of power substation.  Fried squirrel and electrical disruption.

I have reading I need to get done.  Tonight, I'm going to try to do some school work.  I hope to be caught up with my class preparation by tomorrow night.  I also have a book to finish for my book club meeting next Thursday.  I'll probably end up just sitting on the couch and watching TV when I get home.  That's the way my nights have been tending recently.

I'm not sure I'm ready to let go of summer yet.  The weather has been spectacular this June, July, and August.  Yesterday, it hit almost eighty degrees.  I know I don't have a choice in the changing of the seasons, but I can stubbornly hold on to August until the last leaf on the trees turns from green to orange.

My wife had a job interview this afternoon for a teacher's aide position with the local Head Start program.  She thinks it went well.  We have to wait until the end of the month to find out if she got a job.  We're trying to remain realistic.  The chance of my wife getting a position is fairly slim.  A lot of people apply for these jobs.

I just got a phone call from my wife.  She told me I got a $250 check  in the mail for being a "guest author" on the U. P. Book Tour this summer.  I am totally shocked.  I was never expecting any kind of compensation for my involvement.  A blessing out of the blue.

I think I've come to the end of my thoughts.  I'm going to sit back and bask in the good news I just received.

Saint Marty believes in miracles today.

Even Charles Dickens rambled

April 8: Easter Card, New Cartoon

On this Easter Sunday night, I'm going to use this post as my Easter card to my wife.  Since cash has been tight for us recently, I didn't buy my wife a card for Easter.  I was planning on creating a hand-made card, but (no surprise here) I ran out of time.  I owe my wife this post.  So, here goes...

My Darling Love,

On this day, when we celebrate the Risen Savior, I give thanks for you.  I give thanks that you are in my life to save me, each and every day.  When I get up for work in the morning, you are there to remind me why I work.  When I come home after a long day, dog tired, you are there to remind me how to smile and laugh.

You are my warmth in the cold night.  You are my umbrella in the rain.  You are my light in the darkness.  On this glorious day, you, our daughter, and our son are the greatest blessings in my life.

Saint Marty believes in miracles because of you.

Confessions of Saint Marty

June 17: Homeless Man, Saint Harvey, Lost Tooth

In the area in which I live, a homeless man died of exposure in the woods this past week.  Usually, in early June in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, it can get chilly at night, but not so cold it would kill somebody.  Homelessness is not an issue most people think about in the U.P.  We have our share of group homes for people with mental illnesses, and we also have a low-income hotel, as well.  However, when you walk down the streets of our towns, there aren't people begging on the corners or pushing loaded shopping carts around.  Homeless people live in the big cities--Detroit, Lansing, Flint.  Not along the shores and beaches of Lake Superior.

Not in my hometown

When I attended a NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) meeting last year in Marquette, one of the people there (let's call her Tina) had a brother who was schizophrenic.  Tina's brother wasn't taking his medications, and she was at the end of her rope.  Until her brother tried to harm himself or someone else, Tina couldn't get her brother hospitalized.  It's one of the horrible truths in the treatment of the mentally ill in this country.  In the effort to protect the rights of a person with a mental illness, that person has to try to kill somebody before he can be helped.  My coworker, who also attends NAMI meetings, told me yesterday that she thinks the homeless man who died in the woods was Tina's brother.

Tina's brother slipped through the cracks, the victim of a system that was set up to protect him.  He died, homeless in the woods, his civil rights intact.  I understand the reasons behind the laws, but I have also been in a situation like Tina.  My wife needed help, was obviously out-of-control, but her therapist, her doctor, couldn't tell me anything.  They just had to let her march down a self-destructive path.  Thank God it turned out better than it did for Tina's brother.

Today's saint, Harvey, was born blind.  His father died when Harvey was an infant, and his mother gave him to a "holy man" to raise.  Eventually, the holy man sent him to a monastic school to continue his religious education.  Harvey eventually became Abbot of the monastery, even though he was never ordained a priest.  He's famous for being a wandering minstrel and performing miracles as an exorcist.

In today's world, a wandering, blind, holy exorcist would probably end up freezing to death in the woods.  At the very least, Harvey would be one of those people you avoid in subways and bus terminals.  Poor.  Homeless.  Hungry.  When I think of people like Harvey and Tina's brother, I find myself a little humbled.   My first thought isn't about their mothers or uncles or brothers.  My first thought is how lucky I am to not be them.  My second thought is how lucky I am to have a family member with a mental illness who is relatively stable, healthy, and happy.

My third thought is about my daughter, who called me this morning to tell me she lost another tooth, and my son.  I think about the capacity for mental illness they've inherited.  I pray that they won't end up homeless in the cold woods. 

Saint Marty prays they will end up performing miracles with their lives.

My kids, reaching for the stars

May 13: Our Lady of Fatima

Manly Man Poetry Night. My pastor friend and I were at Big Boy by about 8:30 p.m. The evening had been a little stressful because we had a house showing at 6:30 p.m., so I couldn't bring my son home to put him to sleep until well past 7 p.m. My wife took my daughter to her dance class. I know I haven't written about selling our house for a while. It's still for sale. People are still coming to look at it, at least once or twice every couple of weeks. Make me an offer. I'll throw in a garden hose and a copy of Alice Sebold's Almost Moon for free. (That book is the only novel I have ever read that I can say I absolutely hated. I could find absolutely no redeeming qualities in it. I loved Sebold's first two books--Lucky and The Lovely Bones. I've used both as texts in classes I've taught. Almost Moon belongs in the kindling pile for starting campfires. In my humble opinion.)

I didn't have onion rings tonight, and neither did my friend. He had chili cheese fries. It was a pretty crappy, rainy, drizzly day, and the temperature remained in the low forties. So he was looking for something to warm himself. I, on the other hand, was looking for an ice cream fix. I ordered a chocolate chip cookie, hot fudge sundae. Both my friend and I were quite satisfied by our menu selections.

Next week, my friend is gone to a church conference, and the Thursday after that is book club. The final Thursday he's here will be another book club meeting (we moved it up a week so he could attend before he moved to his new church downstate). So, after this blog, there will be only two more Manly Man Poetry Nights with my friend.

May 13 is dedicated to Our Lady of Fatima. In 1917, in a small city called Fatima in Portugal, the Virgin Mary appeared to three shepherd children. The children ranged in ages from ten years old to seven. From May 13 to October 13 of that year, Mary appeared to them on six occasions. The final manifestation on October 13 was accompanied by the miracle described in the poem below. In various accounts, the event was witnessed by 30,000 to 100,000 people, and, despite all scientific attempts to explain the astronomical oddity, no satisfactory theory has been given. The theories range from mass hallucination to stratospheric dust.

I'd been thinking about this miracle ever since I realized that Manly Man Poetry Night fell on the feast day of Our Lady of Fatima. I always love reading accounts of modern miracles where the scientific community scrambles to provide absolutely ridiculous explanations for the unexplainable. It's almost as if nothing can be taken on faith. Faith is somehow equated with ignorance, and in the 21st century, with i-Pods, i-Phones, and i-Pads in nearly every home, ignorance is just unacceptable.

I, on the other hand, could never survive without faith. Simply putting pen to paper, composing a poem or essay or short story or blog, is an act of faith. Launching these posts into the ether of the World Wide Web is akin to stuffing a note in a bottle and tossing it into the ocean. You hope someone eventually finds the bottle, reads the note, and comes to find you on your desert island. Then there's the faith of living with mental illness. I get up every morning and go to work with the faith that my wife is fine and able to function normally. There's also the faith of believing that my wife's addictions are under control, that she's not sneaking off to the local library to use the Internet.

Getting out of bed is an act of faith. Driving to work--faith. Eating breakfast--faith. Answering the phone--faith. Taking a breath--faith.

Let me boil it down for you: life is an act of faith.

That's what the poem I wrote for Manly Man Poetry Night is all about. The exercise itself comes, again, from The Practice of Poetry. It's called "One's-Self, En-Masse." Poet Michael Pettit says to "write a description of two or three paragraphs...in which you describe one particular member or element of a set...The challenge is to perceive the qualities of the group, and to distinguish what makes an individual member of that group both a part of it and apart from it." Now, obviously, I didn't limit myself to two or three paragraphs, but aside from that, I think I followed the guidelines pretty well. So, without further adieu:

O Milagre do Sol
(Miracle of the Sun)

Fatima, Portugal
October 13, 1917

We gathered in the fields of Cova da Iria, in the rain, so many of us that Christ himself couldn't have fed us all with fish and rolls. Peasants and monks. Scientists and soldiers. Faithful and faithless. We waited as clouds pissed on our praying heads, baptized us in mud, made our wool coats heavy as the sea. In the distance, the children, like three tiny crosses, stood, gazed upward. Even in the leaden morning, their faces shone like polished copper. We recited the rosary, sang "Ave Maria," laughed at old women with faces like dried figs who beat their breasts, sobbed about the end of the world.

I came as a poet, artist, voice of reason crying out in a desert of goat herders. I came to watch, listen, write a letter to the world about the magic of manure at Fatima. To be the way, the truth in this mob of garlic eaters, 100,00 strong.

Near noon. Silence. A church bell started to toll, hollow as whale song. The screams began.

Clouds parted, gave way to a silver sun that rolled and danced. It crossed the sky, as if thrown from one invisible child to another. Back and forth it bounced, fell, rebounded. Turned bloody. White as my grandfather's head. Blue. Salamander green. Yellow as harvest wheat. The unseen children kept tossing it. Up. Down. West. South. North. East.

We rolled on the ground. Ran for town. Fell on our knees. Ripped our clothing. Cried, screamed our mea culpas. For ten minutes. For six hundred seconds of fire, rapture, second coming.

Then, the sun was back in the heavens. We stood. Rooted. Panting. Saved.

I, the poet, after hours of sodden doubt, gazed into clear sky for the first time. My clothes, hair, skin warm as my mother's just-baked bread.

February 26: Saint Porphyrius

When Porphyrius was living as a hermit near the Jordan River, he was suffering from a disease that caused hardening of his liver. For the jaded 21st century reader, this fact sounds like he passed the long nights in his cave hitting the wine skins a little too hard. Let me assure you, there are ways for a liver to go bad that don't involve the abuse of alcohol, and all of my Googling has revealed not even a hint of Porphyrius maintaining a still in the hills of Palestine. My research did reveal, however, that there is a disease called porphyria in which the red blood cells basically eat each other. The coincidence may be just that, a coincidence. Or Porphyrius may be the only saint I've encountered with a disease named after him.

One day, this desert monk, while praying on Mount Calvary, was "miraculously cured" of his disease. (Cue the Gospel choir singing "Just a Closer Walk.") Porphyrius went on to become a priest and, eventually, the Bishop of Gaza. He died at the age of 68.

Stories of healing interest me. If that healing is miraculous and sudden, even better. I'm, for the most part, an impatient person. I like the notion of submitting a request to God in triplicate, with all the correct signatures in place, and receiving an immediate miracle. Heck, I'll put up with a little wait time. Even Amazon Prime takes two days for delivery. Coming from a society where instant gratification is just a credit card and mouse click away, however, I've learned to expect quick turn-around. In reading the Bible and stories of the saints, I'm always encountering miracles of healing. Sometimes they require taking a healing bath, but pretty soon crutches are being tossed aside and blind beggars have to find another line of work.

My personal experience with healing is not quite so satisfying. I've had requests on my prayer list for years with no indication that I've moved to the top of God's to-do list. (Okay, I know that winning the Pulitzer Prize requires an alignment of circumstances that takes a little time, but twenty-plus years seems a little excessive.) Ever since Beth was diagnosed with bipolar and then developed sexual addiction, I've prayed that God would cure her, balance the chemicals in her brain, silence the unhealthy sexual appetite that sometimes overtakes her. So far, I've only gotten three-year respites between crises. I've been grateful for those quiet times, don't get me wrong. But for a being who created the entire universe, God seems to go out to Starbucks in my life every once in a while. When I pray, I feel like tapping the microphone during these divine coffee breaks and saying, "Is this thing on?"

Now, most people who profess to be Christians will pat your hand and tell you that God has a plan for everything. There's a reason why your mother died of ovarian cancer. There's a reason why your duaghter was raped. There's a reason why you have to hide your hunting rifles from your teenager who has a death wish. There's a reason why your wife would rather have sex with complete strangers than with you at times. It's all part of God's plan, these Christians will tell you.

Well, to quote a good friend whose daughter has schizophrenia, "If God has a plan, I wish he'd give me a shittin' clue."

I don't think that mental illness or sexual violence or teenage suicide or genocide or war are part of God's plan. These things are just reflections of the fact that we've seriously fucked up the world. God didn't plan for my wife to be bipolar. God didn't plan for my co-worker's son to attempt suicide. But, I do believe that God can take the biggest pile of crap and make a daisy or crocus or orchid blossom out of it. God can take a hermit monk with a liver disease and make a bishop and a saint.

Some miracles can be instantaneous: water + dirt + blindness = sight. Other miracles take a lot of time: Colorado River + desert = Grand Canyon.