Heart of Whimsy !

For Algebretta and Soeur Françoise Thérèse Algebretta, mouse-sized sage, with sawdust dreams and algebraic grace, once ruled a cardboard kingdom in the corner of our class— her whiskers twitching like antennas for divine mischief. She came home with me the week I bested doctrine in a small imposing office with Father Pat and, flushed with pride, challenged a teacher who is best left to memory— not Soeur Françoise Thérèse, who understood far more than I did. Soeur Françoise Thérèse, in habit soft as candle smoke, taught mercy like it was a shape you could trace with a finger— a cross, a circle, the small spiral that marks the difference between knowing the rules and knowing love. She never scolded me for the questions I asked too early or the ones I never dared to speak. She only smiled, as if God might be found even in the peanut shells of a hamster’s dinner tray. That weekend, Algebretta ran circles like a mystic in motion, and I—half theologian, half wild thing— watched her spin, thi...

Life must be lived. You can read about it, talk about it, sing about it— but to know life and understand, you must feel every joy and sorrow, every pleasure and pain, love and loss. Life isn’t easy. What value ever comes from ease? The scars of life are earned. Life must be lived to be known.

(Reverently, of Course) I often speak with God, and I don’t mince my words. Not out of pride, but because I figure He already knows the words I won’t say— and those are the ones that matter most. I don’t bring Him polished hymns, or prayers pre-approved by polite society. I bring Him my gut, my gravel, my questions scraped raw on the edge of the world. I’ve asked Him why evil sleeps in silken sheets and children cry out in gutters. I’ve asked Him where He was when faith was used like a whip. I’ve asked Him what kind of gardener plants a tree He knows will be bitten. And still, He listens. Not like a judge with a gavel, but like a Father who remembers when I was stardust and silence and the sigh before breath. I don’t fear Him— I revere Him. And that’s why I speak plain. Because if I can’t tell the truth to the One who is Truth, then what is faith but a cage lined with scripture? No— I speak, and He answers in wind, in waiting, in the thunder behind my ribs that says: “Speak again. I’m ...

  They say, “Don’t ask,” as if my questions wound Him— as if the Infinite cannot bear my finite, trembling why. But He walks with me in the garden of my wondering, where each question blooms like a wildflower in morning light. I do not fear His silence, nor the thunder of His voice— for whether He answers, or only holds my gaze, He knows my heart. When I ask of Eden, of evil, of pain— when I wonder if love was ever enough— He does not flinch. He shaped my seeking. He taught me to long. And even in doubt, He knows my heart. Not all fires are rebellion. Some flames refine. And if I carry kindling, it is only to see the face of I Am more clearly. So let them accuse me of stepping past the line— but He walks beside me still, unafraid of my questions. He knows. And that is enough.