we were meant to live in the Kingdom of God and this is what politics is all about, people attempting to build with their own hands that which they by instinct know they have lost. But each of these projects, whether good or bad, whether coercive or reasonably free, fails because it is made of the same stuff we are and therefore subject to our mortality. The Kingdom can only be from the Kingdom.

Some time ago, 1983 to be exact, I was on the radio in Alaska. The station KJNP, King Jesus North Pole, in, coincidentally, the village of North Pole just outside of Fairbanks. It was the evening, but the sun was bright as it always is in the far north summer, payment I suppose for the night’s death grip in December.

It was a routine evening, just monitoring a baseball game. As the game went on I heard a slight noise and there was a mouse. Since the building that housed the radio station was essentially a very large log cabin on the outside of town it probably just wandered in. There he was watching me as I sat around, earphones on, making sure the signal from the stadium got on the air. He looked at me and I looked at him. Neither of us moved. I was doing my work and he was doing his, that is being a mouse and scouting around new places.

I don’t remember exactly what I used but I did catch him. He was probably terrified but I had no intention of killing him. When the game was done I walked down the road for some distance, found a likely spot, and let him go. I know animals die, I know sometimes they have to, but I wasn’t interested in killing something for no good reason. Oh, sure, an owl or a hawk might take him later, but that’s what they do. I’m human, I have a choice.

Perhaps the mouse had a few good months left, months when the midnight sun kept things bright into the small hours of the morning and everything was abundant before the cold winds of September. Maybe he was gone the next morning. I don’t know. It just seemed like the right thing to do, let him be free.

I’ve used just about every kind of spray to keep my bathtub and shower clean. None has really worked. I went to Target and bought a can of Comet, 98 cents and a bit of scrubbing. Clean!

The first floor was done, carpeted, tiled, fixed up and ready to go. How could you sell a house and move if the floors were old and worn? The bathroom walls were being prepared for paint. It was time to clean, to lighten the load, to prepare, to think about the future and new ministry.

And then there was the wall.

No plans for it, maybe too busy to see it in the way, sudden. Yet there it was, a wall made up of long miles, late hours, love, work, the best laid plans of mice and men, and a hundred little things light by themselves but heavy in total. They say “Push on, do your duty, ignore the moment and move forward.” They say there is grace there, and I believe its true. Yet what happens when grace collides with finite humanity? What happens if all the love, and care, and skill simply falls short?

Tired isn’t the word to describe it, it’s more than that when the love you have, the caring you give, the dreams you believe in, and the passion for your work, that which pushed you on suddenly and without warning turns on you. Everything inside says “No more” even as you’re aware of all there is left to do. It’s the bad dream where you walk in slow motion and always miss where you needed to go. It is possible for a soul to be exhausted, I see it in the mirror every morning.

Now that’s not the way it’s supposed to be. You’re supposed to be a Priest, a solider, and athlete, a super man of some sort who faces obstacles with ease and swats away the difficulties like a bug on the shoulder. Perhaps its all about how something is wrong with you, you don’t pray enough, work enough, or you’re giving in to fear. You’re weak. You’re mercenary. You don’t have what it takes.

I suspect that help is hard to come by in such a state. Your brothers may fear their own struggles which you in yours represent. Or perhaps they feel the same way but smile behind the code of silence. Who knows? Yet it won’t take away a simple truth. I love the people I serve. I love my work. I have done good things. Yet I can’t take another step, even as I wish I could, even as I am embarrassed to admit it.

I will make it to the other side. God is good and this is a moment that in the scope of eternity is a nanosecond in its significance. My legs will get back under me, my spirit will be renewed. My joy will return. Yet right here, right now, I need to catch my breath, get my legs under me, pray, be sustained in the Eucharist, and sleep.

If I can do this I know morning will come.