The Gregorian Gardener

O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk. But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servant. Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own transgressions, and not to judge my brother; for blessed art Thou unto ages of ages. Amen.

"They give us the wings then dismantle the sky."

Before, I had thought him filled with impulsive energy, the switched-on optimism of fools or saints, the one that goes straight ahead without hesitancy into the chaos of everyday believing that because it is life it is to be embraced in all its contingency, and because God is watching and not off, say, spinning the rings round Saturn, the worst that can happen will not be so bad. For the most part, we don't realize how fixed are our judgements of others, how founded they are in first impressions and the smallest evidences we seize on to prove to ourselves that, see, we were right. Standing alongside him in Cleary's, lambent sun-lances in both our chests, I understood that I had been wrong about Christy. I had come to believe his character irrepressible. I had thought of him as a force, without sureness of purpose, but, in doing so, I had robbed him of human dimension.