I prayed for a prox­im­ity that could only be attained through depen­dence. I peti­tioned for the sort of insight, the sort of dis­clo­sure one could only be privy to under the weight of another’s hand (out of a gen­uine desire to right wrongs of faith, or of char­ac­ter, you might pray to a God of unfath­omable breadth and infal­li­ble love, of unblem­ished inten­tion and incon­ceiv­able truth, an archi­tect of the abstract, a man­u­fac­turer of the recon­dite, or you might kneel, or bow, or bawl in the face of a thing present in all things, absolute and tac­tile, present, always, here; and, if you were of my faith, you’d know the two were the same.You’d see God in the sun and in the trees and in your daugh­ter and rec­og­nize Him, imme­di­ately and with­out prompt­ing, with­out a nudge or reminder or an “umm…”. You’d sing or scream or jump because your entire being would be com­manded to do so, out of appre­ci­a­tion, out of abun­dance). And con­se­quently, the last few months have been eye-opening, and acrid, have been incred­i­bly lucid and excru­ti­at­ing, humbling.

I know, with a fierce clar­ity, that there is no know­ing with­out know­ing Him first. So that’s my focus. I don’t want to beg any­more. I don’t want to appear before my God only want­ing from Him, unap­pre­cia­tive, cold, self­ish. I have to learn more about who He is.