This doesn’t have to be hard, I tell myself, sitting down to write, yet it is, as are many things in my life. Why do I keep imagining it should be easy? Why is difficulty so difficult to accept? The difficulty of loving another person, of being truthful always — who has an easy time of this? Those who speak of transforming the human spirit, as if it were a matter of taking the stairs two at a time — what are they talking about?
Running through darkened streets each morning (sometimes it feels like running, sometimes like kidnapping, my good intentions dragging my heavy carcass behind me); lost in the blind alley of some old fear; climbing the hills of mind under a blazing sun, good intentions burned away by noon — here is where I meet my spirit, here is where I’m transformed. But this is progress by inches, this is the razor night I walk toward dawn, my faith a flickering candle, the fine words I’ve read and written wet matches in my palm.
