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)