Hi Reader,

I mentioned that tech support project last week, but I changed my mind today because there's something else I want to write about. I know I want to write about it because I'm afraid to write about it.

So I grew up with faith. Maybe you know that about me.

And then in college I did some thinking and discovered that all the stuff my faith was based on didn't make sense. I see now that this was only true for me. That it only made no sense for me and me alone. Because, you know, there is no cosmic "sense." Just Kosmos or life or God or Tao or whatever you choose to call it. It's not sensible, it just is.

Anyway, at the time I saw this as a triumph of my intellect. Very clever, Michael, for figuring this thing out that no one else seemed to have figured out. Good boy.

What I didn't see at the time, and only just got clear on last night in my seminar, is a triumph like that had to be over something. Every victory has a winner and a loser. So what was the thing that lost?

It was my faith. My faith failed.

And I see now that I've been all out of balance since then. I see that faith isn't about the stuff faith is based on (or what I thought it was based on). It's just about trusting what is, about being with what is. Faith is totally uninterested in being right. And would you look at that, but what have I spent the last twenty years being all about? Yep. All about being right.

I think I probably can't come home if I'm only about being right. I probably can't come home if my intellect is dominating me. I probably can't come home if I can't trust that this moment right here is, sort of... the way things are supposed to be. That's not a good way of saying it, because things aren't "supposed to be" any way. They just are the way they are and aren't the way they aren't. This is another one of those things that doesn't fit well in the world of language. Which, well, is where I've been living for a long time now.

I don't want to leave the world of language. But neither do I want to let it continue to dominate my life.

...he says, right before embarking on a weekslong project to write a bunch of words about bringing humanity to tech support.

So, yeah, back off course next week.