A new conclusion seems to have become fixed in our political, cultural, moral, and theological landscape. Have you felt that change?

A man behind me, unremarkable other than that he smells of manure and pig wheat

Is balancing unsuccessfully a loaf of sandwich bread

I walked this morning
To a cafe in a tiny house
Set right next to a downtown park

and as I get older
I wonder more if my aging means I’m not
one of the good ones.

And it seemed to me that I was totally invisible and at the same time the subject of all of their stares, like I was a hazy ghost that all the kids could see and see right through.

But there in the quiet of the minivan on that fourth of July evening, it did matter, and I prayed with an honest and risky specificity

The man drove the fork-lift with magic and grace: he navigated it at speed through the narrowest of gaps between a neighbor’s parked car and the rear of the trailer, he danced that fork-lift like he was made for it, like it was made for him.

But more deeply than that, I feel the risk of creative work as a risk of my own self: to put a work out into the world is to put myself out into the world, vulnerable, unsafe, on the edge, unprotected.