This morning I woke up early to help a woman move from her home before the river gets to her.  The levy is supposed to be breached soon and this river that has grown into an unruly child is tantruming all over the place.  We loaded boxes and toys and chairs into a trailer and the air was thick with water and mosquitoes and the whole thing was very sad.

We had gotten up early because the sun has entered into some sort of contest with the river and they are both trying to outdo each other.  By the time we finished, my apartment was sitting at eighty degrees and so I jumped into the shower and laid in bed, wet and tired and small.  Later that day a friend called and we walked to downtown for cheap tacos and margaritas.  By the time we got there we were sticky with sweat and tired of struggling with our clothes and the wind but we were satisfied with getting there on our own, without the hassle of engines and parking slots and meters.

I am reading a book on Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo and Trotsky and it is the type of book that pulls you in and drowns you.  It is a lot like the river, demanding and loud and headed in one direction.  When I read it I am in their heads and I feel their pains and it crowds me out of myself.  The really great books do that, the ones that you have to read only once because they never quite leave you.  My friend stopped in the middle of her story tonight and asked me how I came to possess a wise heart and it threw me.  I drifted for a few seconds and my mind tried to wrap itself around her question. 

Is it your mom?  Did she teach you all of this?  Is it the books? 

Oh, but I really don't know a whole lot.  I really don't know much at all, honestly. 

There is one thing I understand.  I understand that I am here, right now for one more minute because there is something in this minute He is using.  I understand that there are things to learn from water and old women and people of the past.  Sometimes I lay in my bed, tired and wet and small and I try to shrink from it all.  From the presence of Him and that is when I lose.  Sometimes the only thing I know is my skin and the beat of my heart and the way sweat sticks to the air when I move.  Sometimes I simply know that I am me and that He is.

I am not wise, I am foolish and silly with life. But I have learned to love truth and because of truth I have come to know hope. 

My hope is this: that God loves the fools who ask.  And that His love is wiser than any of my follies, stronger than the tantrums in this world, and focused on me, the fool.  This very minute His love is furiously for me.