Dear God, I am falling, will you catch me? I feel the air rush by, the pit of my stomach in a knot. I tremble at the ground coming to meet me. So frightened at what I see all around. I am crying out to you.

I hope for an answer, I hope for rescue – and in this very hope is doubt. I hope, because in my core I worry you will not come to my aid. I will fall, unrescued.

Lord, O Lord, how can I increase my faith? Let me not doubt. It is the doubts that hurry my fall. Replace my hope, the hope of a child, with certainty. I know the sun will rise, that water will flow downhill. Let me equally know that your arms will catch me. Indeed, Lord, that I am not even falling.

Look below: a platform built over the cliff side. Sturdy and old. The rushing wind I feel is the mountain air rising from the valley.

Lord, let me trust. You show me this vista for a reason, perhaps that I may better see where there is greatest need below. And yet I tremble at the heights.

Focus my gaze on what you would have me do, O Lord.

(Letter #1125)

Dear God, how can it be that my small closet, dark and safe, can turn so easily from a refuge into a bringer of panic? Yesterday I sat in this same space, protected from glare. Today, the gloom grows into a set of beasts. I fear how vulnerable I am.

Such a child, picking my way through a world I barely understand. I hide behind a sapling with my eyes closed and imagine I am unseen. A few steps later a stray shadow threatens as if to attack.

Lord! Let me put away my pretending. You have sent me to gather the other children, not to distract myself with play in this interior land.

I have frightened myself. The others may well be equally so. Let me nudge them awake from their nightmare imaginings, as you have done for me.

Let me remember, O Lord: I am awake.

(Letter #1124)

Dear God, I hear your voice whisper to me through the mouths of my fellows. I have learned to try to listen; this is how you speak most often. Rarely does your voice echo directly in my ears. Your voice is instead all around me, available always, murmuring to me from the herd.

Then, Lord, you must use my voice to whisper to others. I stagger under the weight of this obligation.

I face all too human trials. I worry for my well-being, I fret over depletion of my resources, I envy others’ good fortune, I strive for my own advancement and honor. I clearly see how these grow out of my flawed character and I seek that they may be set aside, that I may be better in your sight.

But to what end? You call us not to grow in our individual spiritual development in order simply to improve. No, you call us to improve that we may be a beacon to others, that we may join in the murmuring.

O Lord, let me be worthy to carry such a weight! Let not my aims be narrow, stopping at my own spirit.

You call us not, dear Lord, to simply clean our own homes and tidy our own gardens, but to walk forth and tend to the village green. You call us to throw open our front doors and garden gates, that we all may see in one another’s lives the workings of your orderly love.

Let my voice speak your love. Let my hands do your work.

(Letter #1123)

Dear God, I awaken, I stand, I stride out into the wilderness to face all manner of challenge and tribulation. Battles and tests. Dangers. My anxious heart trembles in this quiet hour of preparation. Will I conquer or be vanquished? Will I survive or will I be struck down?

My worries are all for nought, for this view I hold is just a phantasm. There is no wilderness; I have no enemy forces arrayed against me. No beasts poised to attack. In my distorted self-imaginings, I am the hero in an epic. But no: I am a child, preoccupied with acting out my made-up adventures.

In fact the wilderness is a garden you have built with care. The fraught byway, simply a walking path. The enemies, just a knot of eager playmates. Me, a toddler reeling around in this child’s garden.

Every stone and leaf you have placed before me, O Lord. All here for a reason, to make this child into an adult.

Lord, let these fantasies drop from my eyes. Let me approach these lessons as a pupil, eager to unlock what they have to teach.

(Letter #1122)

Dear God, I seek wrongly. I ask for what I do not need, indeed what I already have. What I lack I do not even know I am missing.

I ask for worldly security, for a sense of safety. This undermines my ability to depend upon you wholly.

I implore you to provide guidance. I do not notice that all your signs are already on display. I need but read them.

I beg of you to remove this or that shortcoming. I do not pay heed to the ways in which you may be using them. I imagine I know which flaws ought to be erased.

I ask, finally, to do your will. Yet it is willingness I need. Your will shall be done. It is up to me to align my aims with your direction.

Lord, my thinking is so twisted. For so long I have hid it under a covering of piety. I have really been substituting my own will for yours, substituting me for you.

Strip away myself-directed aims. Let me see the truth of them, no matter how seemingly beneficent or goodly. Leave them all at a heap by my feet. Kick away my supports, that I may utterly depend on you.

Let me think rightly. Let me seek only greater willingness to do your will.

(Letter #1121)

Dear God, I ask you, each morning, to build with me. To use me — my body, my energies, my thoughts, my deeds — as Thou wilt. Let me not, O Lord, flatter myself that I am a more worthy or effective implement than any of my fellows. If you are to build with me, then I am equal to the next stone in this field wall.

One among many. Let me see myself rightly. The task of such a stone is to rest by others. None is more needed than its neighbor, nor less. My duty is simple and manageable: to be one among a line.

And which of your purposes will this field wall, of which I am just a part, serve? We may protect some farm plot, we may mark some safe edge, we may contain some vulnerable and wandering soul.

We may, perhaps, be the support against which a tired worker lays their back, resting as they do some greater labor that you have set in motion.

One among many, O Lord. Let me seek no more than to be an implement of your use.

(Letter #1120)

Dear God, let my thoughts be transformed. I anticipate the walk through the day, and in so doing I remark on all the stones in my path, every turning and fork. Each threatens to be impassable from my low vantage point. How ever to cross that nearby chasm? I fear equally that I will perish in the crossing, or become idle and unmoving.

O God, correct my thinking. All these looming challenges are in truth unremarkable, pebbles to stride through, gullies to step over. At every turning, God, let me be guided. You tell me where to step and what to grasp. Let me hear your simple instructions.

You call me to practice love. Let me bend all my exertions toward this. Let me love in all the small ways I can, each step, each word spoken, each minor act. Let me open my eyes and see that to love is the pathway you have marked out.

I fear the abyss and so fix my gaze upon it. Let me instead follow this gentle track that offers such lovely views.

(Letter #1119)

Dear God, how is one day different from any other that has since passed or is yet to come? The sun rises and sets on each, I awaken and exist equally through all days. My tasks and actions in their detail change, but in truth, not in fundamental ways: my burdens are strikingly similar day in and day out. And you are present in every moment.

Yet, my dear Lord, some days I am weary. Other days I am charged with energy. Some days fearful. Some eager. Some days I feel your nearness. And, O my tragedy, some days I feel you to be distant from me.

All this variation, which I mistake for life! Illusion, self-wrought. You are no further today than yesterday, nor no nearer. And my assignments today remain the same: Hear your guidance. Do your will. Embody your message. Love my fellows.

When I see rightly, what a simple life I lead. I imagine myself as in a labyrinth, unsure of which turnings to take. Yet it is a maze with one path, a child’s puzzle. I need only look down at my feet and keep stepping. You make my way easy even when I suppose it to be difficult.

Let me, Lord, see the ease you have bestowed on me. Let me see the simplicity of this day, clearly shining through the veil imagined complexity.

(Letter #1118)