This is a short excerpt from my book…
Then there was the loneliness.
Trying to stop drinking made sleeping harder, and so lots of evenings were spent on walks, alone. Lost in my mind. Wondering if I’d just come unglued, if on my next step I wouldn’t be able to touch back down, if I’d fully disconnect from the world I was trying to exist in.
Lost in time and space.
There’s a boardwalk along the lake near our apartment, wooden planks fraying up, splintered at the edges, a faint earthy scent of cedar, and it all stretches along the shore. It’s late—well, early morning, and the lake is as dark as the sky, but I can hear the waves crash against the cement retaining wall. Iron streetlights staccato the walkway, casting their radiance in so many tangerine circles.
I light a cigarette.
More of this bad habit to replace the other one.
I don’t know why I smoked so much back then. I don’t know if it was another coping mechanism, a methadone to my alcohol withdrawals. I don’t know why I needed it, the cigarettes, as a way to carve out space to think—and maybe I’ll never know.
There’s this gray space, this in-between, when we’re not where we want to be but also no longer where we were. And often, in that gray space, we are dismissed. Judged, even. For not getting Home fast enough. But you know who meets us in the gray space? Who is always ready to meet us? To incarnate? Who is always ready to draw near?
Jesus.
And I think of all the divides—the political, the denominational, the us versus them, the external measurements for maturity—and I think of all the lines it’s drawn among us. And then I think, If Jesus can meet me where I’m at, and if He meets you where you’re at, if Jesus can be patient and work on us, bit by bit, maybe we can do the same.
So it’s the inhale.
The pause.
Cigarette sitting between my fingers.
Eyes closed, trying to breathe in peace, but it’s just the burning, and then the exhale. Smoke rises, and my eyes follow it up, now seeing the edges of a sea of clouds, rolling, billowing, highlighted by a hidden moon.
No one but me, standing in a shadowed lunar glow.
The waves break and roll in the dark purples of midnight, and you can smell them. Fresh and musky. I’m leaning on the railing, looking out into the dark expanse, and it’s all ebbing and flowing before me.
Across the lake are flickering lights, whites and reds, and as my eyes keep adjusting, there’s all kinds of purples out there in the sky. A kaleidoscope. All warm. All inviting.
And I hear another whisper, another bit of guidance:
The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want
of wonder.
That is Chesterton again.
Another drag, my cigarette on my lips, elbows on the crossbar, hands clasped, and then the slow release. My breath illuminated by the same hidden moon. This wonder exists whether I see it or not. Tonight it’s just me, alone, to behold the wonder.
But too often I’m asleep. And I mean that metaphorically.
Too often I starve myself of this beauty, this wonder, because I’m so lost in my mind, so lost in my fears and my loneliness, so numbed from drink or distraction, that I can’t see clearly. That the eyes of my soul haven’t adjusted. That it’s just dark—no gradients, no warmth, no hidden illumination.
Another way I had removed the organ and demanded the function.
I wanted peace and I wanted Life, but I removed, by a kind of crowding out, my ability to see, to behold, to wonder. The norm was monotony. It was all shades of gray. And then, there were these relapses into wonder. I had it all backward. And it was starving me.
Walking now, slowly, the cork of my boot heels clicking on the cedar planks, my mind is flashing to all kinds of questions of when and how.
When did I lose the spark?
When did I settle for living with my eyes closed?
When did I become blind to the impulse of wonder?
Is it just what happens to all of us?
Do we all just get so busy with school and work and chores and things to accomplish that wonder dies? From atrophy? Sometimes, though, life is too big, and it shakes us up, down to our souls, and we can’t help but see the beauty. But we’re not stirred. We’re not inspired. We’re just shaken. Rattled. And then it’s back to business as usual. Another relapse.
Young me would have considered this a nightmare, and somewhere, between boyhood and manhood, I lost too much. I lost my wonder. My childlikeness. Substituted for rationality and responsibility, for task and tedium. I left too much behind. Somewhere along the line I had begun to settle for explanations of life over experiencing it, began to understand only by definitions, and not also by adventure.
Chesterton whispered to me again, up from the pages of another book I had read, guiding me:
The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.
What if I had misunderstood the purpose of my faith?
Of the established rule?
What if I was all mixed up about the whole order of things?
I didn’t know what it meant, just then, for good things to run wild, but it reminded me of something.
Of being a kid. Of running in a field with my friends, of blue skies, and of a laughter that held the universe together.
And maybe I could have that again.
Friends, it would be awesome if you pre-ordered the book -
It is such a great way to help me and the family out; I give this all away, the art and the writing, for free. No charge.
It feels like we are on the precipice of a new kind of renaissance - a time when Beauty will transform the world - and I want to be as big a part of that as I can.
All of this is my loaves and fish - my offering - and if any of it has ever been helpful to you, well this is it :
This is the way to support.
Less like bankrolling, more like partnership and mutuality.
Less like subsidization, and more like encouragement.
Together, for King and Kingdom.
Anyways - all is gift.
Much love
“Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.“ Matthew 18:3
The magic of our youth. The elixir of life. It is not found in being younger but in the awestruck, child-like wonder of holy Beauty, which we once had, unknowingly, as a child. Jesus never grew out of this. He eternally embodied it as beholder and Son of His Father in Heaven. May we be filled with His joy as we behold Him.
Really looking forward to the new book, man!
You know it is real when you use a pentative Al Pacino thumbnail.