He was not a stranger 
to death, 

as a tiger lily in the fire
feeds the earth 
or a scarlet tunic, neatly strapped 
on a centurion's breast
marred and ripped as a 
boastful tattoo 

"Corona Muralis" 

Watch with me the sun, 
the red sun 
rises over banks of coarse sand 
and her horizon awash a 
killing world 

Watch him break the earth's 
fortress seal, breach it's 
stonewall 

and see for yourself a blood 
flowing down palisaded 
trees into cosmic 
green 
paradise 

* The mural crown (corona muralis) was the decoration of the soldier who was the first to scale the walls of a besieged city, and was usually a circlet of gold adorned with a series of turrets.

“For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.” - Jesus of Nazareth (John 9:39)

Where a pale light 
pressed against my eyes 
under the face of heaven 
binds and guise my sight; 
I love the darkness of God 

When mystery sings her lullaby 
pacifies concordant pride 
silence the inner voice of 
anxious mind. 

Not the deathly shadow, 
not the harrow or the lie, 
not the dark beneath 

But when the bright sun 
on the early evening sea 
glimmers and mutes her color. 

Where we cry, 
because we know Him 
as a bluejay knows the sky 
in endless, unsearchable 
security. 

This poem is primarily a reflection on how the light of God often means darkness for humans. There’s a mystery to knowing God that means we don’t have all the answers— and we actually have to re-learn what it means to live. Looking at God is like looking at the sun: it’s so bright it blinds us, but we need it to light the day.

It is liberating when we realize that to know Jesus is to know the answer. He is the explanation. The mystery of Christ fulfills every sense of confusion we are forced to live with in this world.

your head is still spinning  
laid aside on the temple floor, things 
sometimes
move too fast to understand 

"Hoshi'ah Na" you mutter. 

the ache in your jaw 
dried saline tears coat the eyelid 
cluttered dirt masking your face 

"Hoshi'ah Na" your mind rings again 

the atmosphere has settled, still the
faint yelling heard outside the courts 
the slosh of money returned in bags 
the piles of tablewood
rummaging, 
the whip at your side.

you are left in deserted glory, that 
disgusting incense scent, "holy"
you thought it was,
now your heart burns 
pierced and achey, writhed, dried, dead, 
emptied, fodder on the side 
baptized. 

 "Hoshi'ah Na" you groan a last time 

you are now a temple piece
cleansed,
creased over by God in 
your shattered false hope

now
you live

This narrative poem depicts a picture I had in my mind of a man left repentant at the aftermath of Jesus’ cleansing of the temple. Though the biblical story often tells us of the Pharisees who opposed Jesus, we know that there were a number of Jews who caught Jesus’ message and believed in Him.

Hoshi’ah Na is the literal Hebrew transliteration of the word “hosanna,” meaning “please save us.” This was both a prayer and a title given to describe who the Messiah would be and what he would do. The salvation that was prayed for was often a military, political salvation. This was radically undermined as Jesus cleansed the temple in this moment.

Here, we imagine a man realizing, in his most vulnerable moment, that Jesus is not here to save via a new Jewish military power, but to save by purifying the means of access to the Presence of God and calling his people to a pure life of faith in Himself.

"We had faith,
and we cursed the fig tree
weaponized our hope in death 
vacated life in the living: these 
three remain, faith, love, 
and hope is a centrifugal force of nature, pulling 
us in despite 
our dark reality." 
- a poem for this piece

I HEAR a lot about people marked by faith.

“They’re filled with faith,” you hear.

Miracles, prophecies, missions, whatever the lot faith brings.

I also hear a lot about people marked by love. Kind eyes, saints and servants, church communities who love at the deepest degrees.

When is the last time you heard about someone marked by hope?

At the end of 1 Corinthians 13, Paul talks about three attributes that will survive in eternity: faith, hope, and love. It seems to me that we’ve virtually ostracized hope as a noble and necessary aspect of Christian life.

Ever talk to someone you would say is marked by the other two: faith or love? They’re incredible, noble men and women, but the moment you ask them about the state of the world, the future of the church, AI, GenZ, everything and anything going on in the earth, they deflate like a helium balloon exiting the stratosphere. They start griping, complaining, the brow furrows, the smile turns into a frown, and the weight comes down. You either get a sad face aimed downwards, or an angry intellectual argument about some hot opinion around the future.

Jesus cursed the fig tree as a sign, but I think we curse the “fig tree” because we have little hope.

Many believers have faith that God is really working; they have love because the Holy Spirit fills their hearts, but if they were honest with themselves, their day-to-day mood reflects a general cynicism towards the future.

I could count on one hand the number of conversations about AI that felt positive— not towards AI, but towards the future of the world. The best I might get is a shrug and a “It’ll all work out, I guess” sort of response.

Hope isn’t just an ideology; it’s an actual feeling, a mood, a worldview that defines the kind of person you are, the kind of person you feel like.

If you believe in your soul that the world is destined for newness— that God is in the process of making this world truly good, then that is felt in your language, your body, your eyes.

The Western mind feels like it’s in a giant Titanic ship called “hopelessness” running itself into an existential iceberg, ready to topple itself upside down and jump off.

And the Christians will ride in it by faith.

You see, faith and love will get you to act like a Christian towards others and global events, but hope will get you feeling like a Christian.

We know this.

Most of us have given ourselves the ‘Julian of Norwich pep-talk’ at some point:

"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well"

If you’re T.S. Eliot, a postmodern existentialist Christian poet, it sounds like this:

“And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching.”

- Four Quartets, Little Gidding

It’s peculiar to note the difference in what hope sounds like from the 14th century all the way to the 20th century. The former quote is hope without explanation; the latter is hope with a qualification.

We’re all a bit like Eliot.1 We have our “all manner of thing shall be well by ______.” We latch on a qualification to our hope. This ultimately fails as hope, not because we’re not trying to have it, but because if it comes with a qualification, that qualification will ultimately fail in the bigness of the world.

If our qualification is that “all shall be well by the evangelization of the nations,” we will be remiss when that doesn’t happen at the pace we desire, or when nations seem to backslide.

If our qualification is that “all shall be well by the purification of church leadership,” we will be terribly sad to find that leaders have always been failing, and will continue to fail.

If our qualification is “all shall be well by the destruction of AI, and elevation of human embodiment,” we will find ourselves downcast once again because humans have always sought an abomination in their image.

True hope doesn’t start in the future; it starts in the past.

The death and resurrection of Jesus is a finished work. Our creator finished an action that secured an eternal future. This isn’t a small aspect of believing in God; it’s meant to be one of the most defining.

There are not many creative things to write about hope. It’s not a mysterious thing. It’s simply a defining worldview. No ingenuity can beautify the hope of the cross.

Perhaps the biggest test of the modern Western Christian is a test of hope. Can we quiet our souls and hope in God? Can we respond to current events without explanations, but with an unshakeable belief in the future World?

An unshakeable belief that:

“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

The way a shadow 
falls off the clustered 
valley oak, smoothed into 
the sun ridge over the meadow 

The way the wind spins the grass 
and I, atop the hill 
looking past to the white tree on 
the edge across the span 
only less than a quarter-mile far 

We are walking home
to the white tree 
only less than a quarter-mile far 
and the end of things, 
nearer 
than our view, atop the beginning 
(or the middle), nearer 
than the light shafted dust in the 
dry afternoon air

It's the way a shadow falls 
as dusk descends upon 
the earth; as the curtain 
drapes across the stage
in intermissive
hope  

I generally don’t provide any sort of explanation for the poems I post. It’s not because they don’t have layered meaning, but because I assume readers like to ponder on a poem.

THAT SAID, if you, the reader, would enjoy an explanation of future poems on this half of the post, please let me know! I would love to provide one if y’all feel it would make them more enjoyable to read.

“Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” - John 7:38 ESV

THE FIRST TIME I ever heard someone speak in tongues was in a small, Anglican parish outside the city of York, England. Believe it or not, that was also the first time I ever heard tongues interpreted.

It was little known to me how genuinely rare an experience this was. I had no way of knowing that most people in American charismatic churches never actually hear a tongue interpreted. Considering my mega-church Southern Baptist roots, I had no grid for this experience.

This moment would be critical for how I view order in the church. Here I was, an 18-year-old Baptist, sitting in a 500-year-old Anglican high church, the vicar dressed in his robes, real wine for communion, and a message in tongues interpreted. Needless to say, my personal paradigms were quickly shattering.

I’ll spare the long story of my journey thus far with the Holy Spirit, but it would only be a year later that I would be filled with the Holy Spirit and totally convinced of His direct activity in our physical lives. I would witness miracles, healings, and deliverances. Simply put, good reason would compel me to believe in the continuation of the miraculous gifts and the Spirit’s activity.

These moments primed me to spend some amount of time with a large variety of Christian traditions. I’ve had the opportunity to meet with leaders and churchgoers from far corners of the denominational landscape. From Catholic mass, to charismatic houses of prayer, and everything inbetween.

I’ve beautifully experienced some of the craziest, most unhinged church gatherings and contrastingly, some of the most profoundly organized and rhythmic high church services.

One lesson I have learned that I find deeply significant and personally clarifying is that of the question of order and chaos in the church.

Order in the Church

A desire for order in the church permeates nearly every aspect of the intrinsic function of a church community. Whether church governance, the amount of time we should meet on a Sunday morning, how spontaneous, or how theological our worship should feel— all of this roots back to a desire for true order.

True order is not about law, but about peace. It has absolutely nothing to do with how comfortable we feel or if we can always grasp what’s being said. True order is purely about the question of whether Jesus is being worshipped and revealed as he’s meant to be. True order is about who is truly leading— God or man?

For many, church order has come to mean the line we draw in the sand about how spontaneous or ‘wild’ we can get in a church gathering. Far too many who are complaining about order in the church aren’t doing so out of a desire to love and edify the church, but simply because of their own discomfort and lack of control.

Interestingly enough, it can be the same for the other side of the spectrum. I’ve witnessed plenty of Pentecostals uneasy and uncomfortable in a more organized church service. “I just can’t connect with God here,” or, you’re actually upset that they’re not getting loud and exuberant, and you feel out of control.

To quote New York Pastor Jon Tyson, “If you’re hungry for God, you’ll feast wherever you find him.”

What about chaos, then?

Biblically, we understand chaos as when God’s creation operates outside of his will. God brings order to the world in creation by bringing land up out of the water and distinguishing it’s purpose. He brings clarity to the earth.

Chaos is when the world moves and functions without clarified purpose from God. The command to humans to have dominion over the world is a calling to bring order to the world. Our God given mandate is of order.

But what should this “Order” actually look like?

I want to propose an analogy for what order should look like, specifically in the church.

Ocean, Pool, or River?

The church should be like a river.

Rivers have constant movement. Sometimes they rush downhill with force and gusto, and other times they mellow out into a smooth and relaxing flow. Rivers can bring comfort while floating down on a warm afternoon, or they can provide one of the most exhilarating rushes of adrenaline.

In fact, they can do both on the same day.

A river is carved in a specific manner. Whether by man or the earth, the analogy stays the same. A river has direction. It follows an order. It’s not a placid, boring order; the flow of direction changes regularly. Sometimes, that direction leads to carving out entire canyons, and sometimes it has minimal impact, building something great again.

This is what order should be like in churches. They should be exciting yet gentle, safe yet uncomfortable. Sometimes the church will have a deep sense of refreshing and rejuvenation in God. Sometimes the church will be a burning fire that ignites people to mission. Sometimes it’s contemplative, sometimes it’s a rager, sometimes it’s both in the same hour.

The key is direction. Chaos ensues when there’s no direction. I want to propose the two alternatives that result from a church gathering with a lack of direction from God. They are two opposite, chaotic expressions.

The first is a church that feels like an ocean at night. You don’t know what’s going to happen next, and it feels hard to breathe. There is no rhyme or reason to anything; nothing makes sense. Jesus is barely talked about, and you feel like you’re all going underwater.

It’s a church with no direction. Often in the un-ordered “Pentecostal” environments, there is a craze that inhabits the gathering. Speech is constantly unintelligble and people chase a feeling, not God. You have no idea if so-called “miracles” actually happen, and if they did really happen, you would never know. It’s not free, it’s chaotic.

Then there’s the stagnant pool. The body of water that sat still for so long has started to fester with bacteria. It’s so stagnant that it’s gross, and you can smell it from a mile away. You would never jump in. In fact, maybe you’d rather die in the ocean at night because at least that’s more fun than dying from a horrible disease.

That was a joke, I promise.

You get the point. Some churches are chaotic, not because they don’t have any direction, but because that direction stopped moving 50 years ago. It’s a kind of control that masquerades as order. There’s no real life or freedom. No flow. Just stagnation.

The truth is, most churches are not fully one or the other. They might lean towards the pool or the ocean, but rarely is a church body completely unordered all the way through.

We should, however, strive for the river. Connect with the leadership of God over our churches and seek to have a directed flow. A flow of freedom and truth. A flow that runs gently and powerfully.

I heard truth whispering 
around the corner, through 
a dark room— 
and I followed
past the cedar door, into 
dusted air, the drafted window 
chilled and cracked 

and truth slipped through
swirled upwards by the 
four winds— 
and I followed 
softly in the meadow, yellow 
flowers held my face asleep 
up to the heavens

and truth laughed 
giggled and chuckled, it's 
heel vanished behind the 
tall steeple, away into 
dusk, quietly strolling 

and I looked, 
through the glass table
through the lilac, scarlet and indigo 
cross; Golgotha and a bouquet 
painted on the earth, it's 
figure formed and glossed 

I saw dimly 
and I followed. 

Every moon 
I see the black 
vision of God,

a pale 
sky-fire sings her 
epitaph, and we 
embark into 
the dark. 

Every moon is a glowing 
sonnet— a poem, an 
inhaled breath of light 
spilled across the hour 
we bow away into 
the end of 
things.

If the blue flower falls 
out of sight, 
through the green thicket, 
into Abaslom's garden 

the wisp of hope you held was 
a dignity among your old 
world, our first world 

and the second world 
bearing another, a better arrayed 
lily garden, ripe 
with bright indigos, 
plums and magenta 

Let the blue flower fall, 
let the briar patch choke 
your faith in the fading 
plains that die upon 
the second sun's arrival 

and you will crawl through it, 
you will breach the 
lily field, and 
fix your sapphire eyes 
once again on 
love and price. 

I’ve never seen a
being as anxious as a
hungry mother finch 

It’s said the creature 
neither toils, nor suffers. 
Her head twitch quickens.

She’s a shuttering
camera, restless; moving.  
Is this provision, 

God? Or is her mind 
just caught homeward in heaven’s
eternal bosom. 

Ezekiel at Kebar

Spring only hardly brings 
a ration of cooler air. 

At Kebar once again, 
Praying.

How can the earth be
So quiet— so frail and 
desolate. 

“Find us, God. 
Find us.” 

Disclaimer: I am not an expert on this topic…this is an observational essay based on years of thinking, not academic study.

The Christian pilgrimage still exists today.

The journey we take to find God. The spaces traveled to for an encounter with Him. Perhaps the places we never intended to meet with God, but found ourselves caught up in glory— marked forever. We left different, transformed.

Many of us link pilgrimage to lofty stories of saintly monks. Desert men who travel to extraordinary places, abstain from pleasures at the highest levels, and leave in glory, transformed— anointed with power.

I don’t doubt these stories. In fact, I find myself inspired by them.

But what if there’s a modern premise for this?

Ever sat in a circle and listened to Christians share their stories? The kind of Christians who truly love Jesus for all He’s worth? Submitted and surrendered?

I see the same trend among most of them. That there’s a profound place or moment, a journey they went on, a somewhere, that they encountered God. Of course, in my circle, that’s mostly church camps and mission trips.

But what’s the issue with that?

When I read the Bible, Genesis to Revelation, I read story after story about people who go somewhere and encounter God. Whether in an ongoing journey or an intended destination, set aside locations become anchor points for meeting with God.

The Lord appears to Abraham at the great trees of Mamre

Jacob at Bethel.

Moses and the burning bush, the encounter at Sinai.

The Prophets at rivers, mountains, and valleys.

Jesus at Transfiguration. The two men on the road to Emmaus. Paul to Damascus.

God shows up at places. Those places and destinations become a part of us. A part of our story.

One broad thing under attack in American evangelicalism is youth group culture, and one sub-category is church camps and retreats. I was raised in a classic evangelical youth group. Many of my early encounters with God are attributed to D-Now Weekends (it’s a southern thing) and summer church camps. High school mission trips abroad and locally.

I remember worship nights at Carolina Creek Church camp in the middle of nowhere, Texas. Confessing my sin, responding in worship, and feeling God’s love poured into my heart. If that’s not an encounter with God? What is?

For a long time, I felt deeply upset that we didn’t feel this same way on Sunday mornings or Wednesday nights. If God is eternally present with us, why does he seem to only show up tangibly at retreats and camps?

I wanted to reform the system. Make Sunday mornings spiritually explosive. Pray hard enough and create enough spontaneous space so that people can be ‘radically wrecked by God’ every Sunday. Sure, it risks emotionalism, but what if people did tangibly encounter God every week?

I fully believe that’s possible, but I also realized I wasn’t doing justice to the biblical and historical phenomenon of pilgrimages.

What is a Pilgrimage?

I want to define pilgrimage as not just a journey to Jerusalem, but these places we go to that mark us forever. These cruxes of our lives that become hinge points. I can name a few of mine:

• In the youth-room-basement of my church. Age 12

• In a dingy apartment complex on a mission trip to Houston. Age 14

• Darlington train station, England. Age 19.

• A Pentecostal tent gathering in Texas. Age 21.

There are many more, but these are some solidified memories of God-encounters that I can confidently say my life hinges on.

This isn’t just me; this is the life of many historical saints.

Billy Graham, famous preacher and evangelist, would say his entire life hinges upon what he called his “Tree Stump Prayer.” In a moment of spiritual turmoil and wrestling, he returned to a familiar forest home in which God broke into his life.

The Desert Fathers are filled with stories of traveled-to locations that become destinations of spiritual transformation. Often, they stayed in these places for years on end.

The Moravians moved to establish an ongoing house of prayer and biblical community, one that lasted over a century.

John Wesley had what he called the “Aldersgate experience,” well known among Methodists as “Wesley day.” A dated moment on May 24, 1738, when Wesley stumbled into a Moravian meeting on Aldersgate Street and encountered the Gospel for the what he would say was the true first time in his life.

There’s no way to overspiritualize the pilgrimage. Some people go to their cabin in the woods searching for something, while others stumble into a house by accident. Some isolate themselves in the high desert, some others meet with God in a fluorescently lit Texas church camp chapel.

Pilgrimages can become the spiritual framework for how we understand our walk with God daily. Biblically speaking, God shows up in moments. There are few, if any, instances of biblical characters who lived their entire lives in complete glory.

In fact, most of them spend their entire lives in either difficult suffering or simply religious monotony. In Luke 1, Zechariah is performing his regularly scheduled priestly duties, ones that he had been carrying out his entire life, when an angel appears to him.

I know that’s not necessarily how we would think of a pilgrimage, but the serendipity of the moment stands.

Yes, pilgrimage is about going somewhere, but what if that somewhere is a daily part of our lives? Can we still even call it a pilgrimage?

I think if we can understand that God likes to show up powerfully in these hinge, anchoring encounters of our lives, we can also realize that it’s okay to live the rest of our lives not always feeling that glory.

That we see the heavens rend open. We see God in all of his heavenly being— we become undone. But we return to our normal lives, changed forever.

That we go up the mountain to encounter Him, but we hike back down to love our neighbor.

What are the pilgrimage moments you can call back to? Have you ever had one?

Maybe it’s time for you to have one?

Crimson orchids
clutching to their very 
own emerald trees;
a worn, weary trunk 
burrowed beneath 
dead brown grass. 

Am I an orchid, 
clinging to solid bark or 
a tree, sapping nutrients or
am I giving all that I have to 
create some,
beautiful, 
symbiotic
mixture 
of 
love? 

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"Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
6
Time before and time after.
Eructation of unhealthy souls
Into the faded air, the torpid
Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London,
Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,
Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world"

 - T.S Eliot, the Four Quartets, Burnt Norton 

The beauty in reading masterful poetry is recognizing that every single line has been mulled over and intentionally written down to the syllable. T.S. Eliot, infamous for his very few published poems during his life, is no exception to this.

I could write an essay for every section of this marvelous poem (and maybe I will), but I was particularly moved to write about this line:

“Distracted from distraction by distraction”

I found myself thinking through this line over and over again.

“What does that mean?”

There’s a growing hunger for quiet and stillness in our busy world. Re-enchantment, meditation, walks in nature. It’s regarded as a prize and gift to sit for hours in bored pleasure. To observe trees, birds, or flowers.

Many would call this a distraction. A form of wandering away from the tasks at hand. Of lingering in unproductivity.

Oxford Languages defines distraction as this:

1. 1.

   a thing that prevents someone from giving full attention to something else.

To be distracted is to have something that you should (in theory) be focused on in the first place. This is a philosophical question. What should we be giving our attention to?

What should we be focused on?

Career? Family? The birds and trees?

God?

What is it that you are distracted from?

All of us live with a sort of moral focus for our lives. We have this subconscious sense of what life should be about. To be distracted, in our minds, is to get off track of that thing.

It’s no secret in Four Quartets what T.S. Eliot’s focus is. Simply put, it’s God. It’s a life of humility, a life of trial by fire, and renunciation of the world. A heart of divine love.

So what does it mean to be ‘distracted by distraction from distraction ’? What is the real distraction that Eliot is getting at?

The First and Second Distractions

I suggest that it is all the things in life that we use to intentionally fill the void. Achievements we strive for. Books we write and businesses we start. “Filled with fancies and empty of meaning.” Activities we create in an effort to replace the feeling that comes when we face the first distraction.

The first distraction is daydreaming. Thinking about the past or the future. Wondering if there is more to life than this material world. It’s the spirit’s pull into transcendence.

When we turn our head towards the window in our house (or classroom & office) and look outside— pondering another world.

Pondering if there is something more.

When we see a tree, or flower, or a rock that interrupts our moment in time.

The first distraction is a gift. The Holy Spirit is a friend to the first distraction— perhaps He’s the one who initiates it. He whistles to get your attention. To snap you out of the daze you’re living in. To pull you out of “Tumid apathy with no concentration.” Not the concentration on your finances or whatever burdens of the day you have. The concentration of God. The perpetual sense that there is more than what you see.

I think we call that longing?

Then there’s the second distraction.

The distractions we create to keep us from the first. Not your family, maybe your career.

Definitely your phone.

The second distraction is “Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind.” It’s the overarching activities we use to fill our time— because we think that all our time needs to be filled.

Really, it’s about fear. Fear of death, fear of not mattering— of gaining and losing. The second distraction is about vain meditation and occupation. Keeping ourselves busy enough to never stop and think deeply, to think transcendentally.

It’s a form of pride or hubris. A resounding, willful ignorance. It’s how Eliot describes the world in its “metalled ways.” The ‘hevel’ or ‘vanity’ of Ecclesiastes. The Babel we try to build, whether in the high institutions of our world or in the crevices of our hearts.

Eliot practically prophesied phones, media, and influencer culture.

Meaningless fancies.

We know it doesn’t matter. We all admit it’s brain rot. $32 billion is in the global influencer market. Money is always a reflection of what we give our souls to, and that’s a staggering grip on the human mind.

Yet why? Why are we addicted, tethered? Either to phones or those ‘holier’ fancies (like successful careers and achievements) we give ourselves to. I’m not just talking time, I’m talking the meditation of our hearts.

We want to avoid the first distraction. Anything to fill the void of silence.

“The Word in the desert Is most attacked by voices of temptation”

So What?

Be distracted.

Yield to the sight of trees and birds, to the thought of God.

When that pull comes— the whistle of distraction, give in. Don’t reach for your phone. Release the anxiety of whatever burden is on you, and let distraction come.

You don’t have to make it spiritual, either. Suppose it’s God talking, great. Let your mind wander. Stare at a wall or the ceiling. Let your eyes lose that glimmering focus and pan out into nothingness.

Don’t fear the inner solitude when it interrupts your day. Give it as much time as you have.

Do your work, love your family, and your neighbor. Live your life to the fullest and accept the voice of boredom when it comes. Let the void of your soul open. Do not fill it or feed it. Let it open and then give it to God.

But don’t, by any means, give in to the second distraction.