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Prayer
Sunbeams
August 1999I tend to be suspicious of people whose love of animals is exaggerated; they are often frustrated in their relationships with humans.
The Cave
I’d discovered my hideout a few months before, when I chased a hare behind a mulberry bush at the foot of a large mound, about the size of a wheat pile at threshing time. Following the hare’s trail, I found a small hole in the rock, completely hidden from view by the bush.
February 1999I Don’t Have All Night
Yet even here, at one of the more innovative schools in the country, graduation was still . . . graduation. Even here, at the end of the most violent century in history, graduates were exhorted in the usual ways to step across the mass graves and the poisoned waters and the broken vows. Step lively, the speakers told them.
January 1999
What Miss Lena Prays For
Miss Lena goes into the dressing room, closes the folding three-way mirror, gets down on her knees, and prays. I wonder if she’s really praying for customers, as she tells me, or if she’s praying for bigger things, like peace in Yugoslavia, where she is from and which she calls Yugo, or maybe an end to homelessness. It seems to me you shouldn’t waste a prayer on attracting customers.
September 1998December 1996
I tried to understand something about forgiveness. I wrote a letter to my dead father, then tore it into small pieces. I carried the pieces around for years before I buried them. I forget where.
December 1996A Prayer
This is the 250th issue of The Sun. Given the life expectancy of most small journals, I’d like to offer a prayer of thanks. But on which knee? To which God? I’ve always been reluctant to identify myself with any spiritual path. I don’t even like to use the word spiritual, because it divides the world into what is and what isn’t.
October 1996
