Some time ago, I wrote of the lie of the blank page. This white screen ripe with false potential, as if nothing had yet been written, as if our screens weren’t utterly blackened by all that we have seen, our etch-a-sketch minds shaken and ready for more. There is no proposition that is more eminently tenuous. And yet, I wake in the morning, every morning, as if it’s a new day. This third iteration of an almost entirely unseen record awake, alive – waiting. It’s a new game. Do you want to play?

Yes, of course, who doesn’t, right? Who doesn’t want a new game? It’s not new, of course, and I am being played, but that IS the game. Let’s pretend. Let’s follow a new configuration of the endless rules and shifting stories. Let me follow my fancies, pretend these bits of light are stone. The game provides it all, yet the molten heart seeking this land of make-believe knows I must force myself to believe. Without it, without this shiny lie and my compulsion to remain in it, what would I have but the truth? A darkened screen, one long night, and the promise of dawn.

I must work the works of Him that sent us, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work, says our Lord of His L-rd. I wish to abide in him, we are commanded to continue in him, yet I refuse to rest in him, as an unclean spirit (Matt. 12:43). I return again to the home my empty soul, taking spirits with me even more wicked than myself, in worse shape than my first escape. My G-d, what have I done?

How do I move though my days, darkened by sin, haunted by regrets? How can I even live and breathe?

Again, the game asks, Are you sure you want to be saved? All progress will be lost.

I toss and turn. I know, in a deep way, this is my struggle – only my struggle. My constant shifting between I and my and and we and and us and our (I constantly must go back and hunt them down), is a royal schizophrenic evasion. Even as I go back and edit, replacing “we” with “I,” “our” with “my,” still thinking “we” and “our”. As if “you” were with me, wishing “you” were here. Instead of me. Wishing “you” were a real friend, instead of being what “you” are, a little ring of power, my precious.

L-rd, what is this? Let it be stolen and lost. Bring me to You, lead me and help me follow, lend me Your strength, show me Your face.