Sunset at 5:23pm with temperatures deep below freezing. At a meeting in a church basement, I admired a large wooden cross before a bank of filing cabinets and contemplated the two-thousand-year collision of metaphysics and paperwork that led to this moment.
Outside, an airplane engine grinds overhead. Telephone screens glow in the night like devotional candles. I once heard a woman say, “I refuse to believe in a god of confusion.” I often think about her voice, small and hushed, a desire addressed to nobody in particular. Perhaps it’s the greatest desire of all, to believe there’s some sense to all of this.
