False Start

(Continuing)

Who the hell was he to determine that his essay was an important one, as if no one should ever want to slip by without getting in on the blessing he knew it would provide his readership?

It's just that he had seen it time and time again and even fallen into much of the same unhelpful patterns himself in his earlier life. He'd seen it cause much pain and unholy distortion. The first word, what you started with, the main thing that every other "part" of the most basic of the basics in the life of faith (as far as he and so many millions before him had been taught) was a three letter word that stunk like, hurt like, smeared like and stained like good old capital S-I-N.

First things first, they had all seemed to say, even as a young man growing up in catechism class, "You may not forget about this one. This is where we have to start. The good old-fashioned honest truth. You are a sinner living in a sin stained and sin broken world. Taken as yourself, just you being you in whatever place you happened to find yourself, you needed to be assured and agree that all of it was tainted through and through."

That meant the cruel world around you and that meant you too.

Now that he wasn't any longer enlisted as a professor at the Uniquely Named Christian Academy, he could finally write more freely.

He was working down a list of major points he knew he wanted to make. But of course, owing to his nature, he'd generally start out at the tip of some circuitous point and then let the writing move him toward the clarification of what that point was actually supposed to be. He remembered how Annie Dillard had referred to writing as an epistemological tool, a tool in the hand of a sculptor who by tapping along word by word in a straight and honest line eventually gave shape and form to a new and inviting finished product. We find out the truth by talking things through to their conclusions. It was a good start and took for granted the basic goodness of nature and the world which gave every inquiry of this nature a more positive and hopeful trajectory.

Why was this essay about "Original Blessing and Original Sin" so vital to him, so important to everyone? The page of the spiral-bound notebook contained this list:

Vital self trust – loving self connection, cultivating a fearful distrust of God and others and self

Pain in the wounding of the branding – sinner. We all are. You know who comes to mind?

Zoe needed her dinner so he put things away and made his way to the kitchen where there were just a few dishes to do. He put on Miles Davis and he and the sweet Burmese swayed back and forth to the sounds of the saxophone and what sang between each of the pieces in the jazz trio. Might be naptime Zoe.

He drained the sink empty and dried his hands and made his way over to the living room.  She was already snoozing, in her kingdom of God.