Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Hope

I've penned almost a thousand of these things now. Since I began a few years ago, I haven't missed a day.

Every morning I sit collecting my thoughts or have them forcibly grab me by the throat. Sometimes I break into my heart while other times it was already broken. There are times when I can't type words fast enough as they rush to get out but then I can sit staring off into space waiting on them to come.

It's a lot like prayer ... except I'm not asking for anything.

Occasionally I go back and revisit them but I have a tendency to not look back very much. I should actually pay more attention to them. There is enough written to comprise three different books.

It's been a while since I've written one.

Tour of Homes was published in 2004 though I actually wrote it a couple of years prior to that. It's big, ending on page 368 and what I remember is that I wanted to write a big book with lots of stories woven together to make one story. I also was determined not to restrict myself so the language is salty, there's plenty of sex and no sugarcoating anybody or anything. I call it "my sex, drugs and rock-and-roll" book.

What it really was though is me working my way out of the world that I'd created. It's a description of what I loved and hated at the time ... the marriage I was in, the heavy burden of an incredibly successful career working with the poor and hurting, the hope for better days ... with an ending where evil wins ... though the very last words are from a mentally ill homeless man ... possessed by demons who are speaking in his head ... as he smiles at the thought of going home again ... wherever that is.

There's no place like home ... sometimes meaning that home is no place.

Dorothy was wrong ... Home is what you make it.

Since then ... the marriage ended, the career abruptly ceased several years after I started trying to leave it, a public life became private and there were hundreds of days when the only thing that I did was write ... and drink.

I believe things happen when they're supposed to. All of these pages were written on Face Book , Blogger.com and in a Word Document. The World Wide Web published them in real time for whoever wanted to read them. Gone are the days of driving to the Book Store or Library to search shelves of what may be interesting reading. Now you can drag the mouse over the first few lines and if they appeal to you, you click more and keep reading.

It's a new world being created. I still love book stores but not as much as I used to.

This morning, lying in bed looking out of the window at an almost full moon and the beauty that surrounds it ... everything I've written came rushing into my head as though children all demanding individual attention at the same time. I watched them as though they were sheep leaving me wide awake.

What I thought about was they all make up three different stories. The first is of love lost, betrayals of the worst kind and what survival looks like. Second is a manual to putting a broken heart back together and how you can never quite get it right again. The last are examples that faith, hope and love abide ... and the greatest of these is love.

The funny thing is the people who kept up and who read these things. Sometimes they comment. Sometimes they don't. I wonder if I stopped would anyone notice? Who knows? It's my way of praying anyway.

When I die and if my kids have any interest left in me, there are books, blogs and notes that they can visit anytime if I'm missed. The same goes for my friends who are now a tight and small Carnival of people. I've had audiences before and they may still be there but I have no need to satisfy them anymore.

When my world crumbled around me, Herb McKenzie told me "With your ability to communicate ... to speak and to write ... you'll do fine," spoken as though it were Pilate himself washing his hands.

So today I'm doing fine. I'm deeply in love. I'm working but in a completely different way. I'm out of the public eye and actually like it, enjoying helping others be in the public eye. I've raised millions of dollars helping my work and now do it to help others do theirs. I speak in Bar Church and ... I write.

I know lots about yesterday, last year and before that too. They're just a bunch of stories.

What is much more interesting is tomorrow.

I've always had faith.

I have love again.

But let me tell you about the hope of what's coming.

It's pretty Kick-Ass!