I Can't Write

The white of a blank page is something I revel in and look forward to, like plunging my face into a cool pool on a hot day, feeling the water swirl around me, silky and luscious. I can swim in a blank page for hours without once realizing the time has passed or that my fingers have long-since pruned. Even when I know I don't care. I love a blank page.

But this blank page is so hard and cold.

Because FBI Director Comey seems to me like a pretty honorable guy. His grasp of the situation seems so right and so righteous to me. He's like the real-deal American, right? The distance between me and people who view him as a pariah for his unwillingness to BRAVO TV his job frightens me.

I had a screaming match with my daughter last night - screaming, both of us at full volume, for the first time ever  - over my wanting her to come home instead of sleep at a friend's house. I don't ever want to do that again and fear that for my fear we may. That frightens me, too.

I am at once gripped and repelled by the news of the last three days, each day worse than the one prior, herald for the collapse of our framework, our absolutes. The war is not over there, friends. The war is right here, right here where we are.

As it turns out, my words fail me when the real thing is happening, when what matters is action and not words. I'm not trained or talented in that arena, and for my worry over my impotence I am rendered more so.

I keep looking for the comfort, the 'helpers' as Mr. Rogers would say. I see them but they don't bring me peace. They look weary, too.

I appreciate that God is there and that I can call out to Him, as I'm sure countless others do every day in every way known to man. But what does God have to do with it all, exactly? Nothing, I think, except to show us how far we are from Him and to compel us to do the little work.

I do that work, but fear I am deeply, drastically, irrevocably outnumbered, outmanned, and quite literally, outgunned.