The Word Spoken

Dear Eugene,

Every morning I'd have a list of chores to do before writing.

Only that they are not mundane tasks to me.  They are spiritual disciplines, firm habits, pilgrimage to reach a place where I'll be spoken to.

Nothing and everything is necessary.

My wife just called me upstairs in the middle of my last sentence; she spilled something on the ceramic stove top, Chinese porridge dessert, starch, sugar, something for tonight for Others sloshing into the morning of this Self.

A nasty circle.  You know what that means if you ever had the pleasure to deal with one of those.  A crater on earth as it is on the moon.  Alien from space beyond my tranquil inner being to take my civility hostage.  Big green oblong face, dark convex eyes staring at me.

Someone please hand me a laser gun.

I took pinches of baking soda and methodically baptized the circle, a light sprinkle here, a full immersion there, all denominations welcome.

Sand mandala, I thought.

When I walked up the hill with Sumi this early rainy morning, I was thinking about writing a piece on Marilynne Robinson's Gilead trilogy (which apparently might expand to a quartet, and I know my prayer has to do with it).  I was thinking about a piece with four to six long paragraphs, something probably good for academic journals that no one reads.

Down the mount of witness (Gilead)
I came Home to beauty (Lila)

Well, the piece ain't gonna happen.  8:49 now, time to get ready for work.  No one's gonna read it anyway.  One of the smoke detectors in my house just went Beep.  Like a bird.  I need to identify which one; from where I am sitting now it's hard to tell.  I think I have an extra 9V battery to kill the sardonic chirp.

Back to Ms Robinson's novels.

I have no time but for three words, one for each novel:

Eloquent
Reticent
Wordless

That's the movement from Gilead to Home to Lila, a trinity state of being in our speaking Jesus the Word, formlessly entwined.

One Word
All spoken for
Even much unspeakable

Yours, Alex

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