Sometimes things feel bad for no apparent reason. Last night I had sad dreams that I can’t remember with any detail. As you get older, you get a real sense of your own mortality. You wonder why you give so much time and effort to a life in which things just happen.

It is wintry cold and windy. I made a grocery trip and the painter has come and gone twice. He is expecting a load of lumber that hasn’t come. I am sure this is not a picnic for him, shoring up an old deck and repainting it.

I am meditating on why I am always rushing when my life is a solitary one. I hurry through books like they will disintegrate if I don’t finish them fast enough. I eat like there is another hog at the trough. (There isn’t.) I hurry to straighten up an already neat house.

In other areas, I let things slide for way too long. I should have moved ten years ago. I kept thinking it would get easier, but now the idea of moving seems impossible. It scares me so much I stop thinking about it. Maybe I will not move, after all.

Being off of Facebook shows me how unreal it is. How unreal everyone is. How everyone is posting and reposting things that don’t change anyone. But we are human animals and the group behaviors are what they are. There are trolls and dragons and devils and such. But there are no angels. “We are the fallen people.” Remember that if you remember nothing else I ever wrote. Leonard Cohen knew that; he wrote from that point of view. Don’t be saccharine. Be broken. That is your only hope of being filled with light.

I mourn daily. I feel selfish daily. I do what I can to wake up. It usually doesn’t work. That is when mercy comes into play. “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.” I keep the Jesus prayer going. It keeps me going….

Vicki Woodyard