As of late, my faith in all things

but mostly God, can be likened to

a young child dragging around a ragged

old baby blanket full of holes, grubby,

grey, worn at the edges, once soft, silky,

unstained and comforting


No doctors have asked me in years

how important this is to me

like breathing, like not going blind,

like not breaking with the next blast

of bad news so I stopped listening to

music because my inner chaos could not

be calmed by cellos or violins


I looked for my lost faith at the worst

times, when sleepless, when overwhelmed,

when angry, hungry, or with the wrong people

so on Tuesday when circling a full parking garage

listening to my son talking, eight dizzying circles up

about health improving when people are prayed for,

whether they know it or not or are believers


all I could say to him was there have been

times I have experienced the gathering of the Spirit,

the ecstasy of silence, the connection to all

both in and out of church settings

but on that particular day, at that moment, a prayer

for an empty parking space was barely mentioned when

a free space appeared exactly where needed


I'm not saying there was a divine correlation

and I felt no fleeting nor lasting lovely feeling.

The rest of the day was full of grime and glass

but yes, I can hold however tenuously to that

practicality of when I needed something simple,

just saying the words was more than enough

and only cost seven dollars and fifty cents

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