I’m rattled and jarred.

I fill my cart
and don’t have the right card.
I arrive at the door,
and the key isn’t in my pocket.
I remember the question I needed to ask
on my way back from the pharmacy.

Every day I face new problems,
design strategies,
make decisions,
and second-guess them.

This train doesn’t stop.
I can’t walk a straight line
without banging into walls.

If I wasn’t so disorganized,
if I wasn’t so attached
to money,
outcomes,
and what people think,
if I were more grounded,
calm,
generous,
and patient,
this wouldn’t be
so hard.

These thoughts
badger me
until I lose it
and enter the dark
tunnel of shame
and fear.

I see it all so clearly:
my sinful patterns
and why I would be abandoned.

“But you are not,”
You say in my deepest darkness.
“Not even if you lose it again
and again
and again.
Not even
if you can’t stop
and never do it right.”

Then I see You clearly,
how You
buffer the rattling and the jarring,
hold my hand through the long dark tunnels,
and bring me into the light. 

I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
–Thomas Merton

*A colloquy, according to Ignatius of Loyola, is a conversation with God, friend to friend, from the heart.

Credits and References:
A Durango & Silverton Narrow-Guage Scenic Railroad train, pulled by a vintage steam locomotive, rounds a high San Juan Mountains precipe in Las Animas County, Colorado. Original image from Carol M. Highsmith’s America, Library of Congress collection. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.
Free railway tunnel image, public domain CC0 photo. rawpixel.
“The Merton Prayer” from Thoughts in Solitude Copyright © 1956, 1958 by The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani. Used by permission of Farrar Straus Giroux.

© Esther Hizsa, An Everyday Pilgrim, 2023.
The unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without permission from Esther Hizsa is prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used provided there is a link to the original content and credit is given as follows: © Esther Hizsa, An Everyday Pilgrim 2013-2023.  http://www.estherhizsa.com