I am really intending to write something funny this week. Got a lot of nice feedback from my piece about Karen's last post but I went a little deep into the emotional weeds. Lots of you wrote to tell me about experiences with your own mothers — many of them also Irish-Catholic — which is gratifying, because I think we all feel like the crazy we were raised with is the only kind of crazy out there.
Like I said: a little heavy. The kind that makes you think too much on a hot Fourth of July week when you'd rather just sip a cold IPA, hang out at the neighborhood pool party, then make the Irish (Catholic) exit to get home and keep the dogs calm during the fireworks show. As a distraction, I let my thoughts drift from emotional baggage to the current crop of modern annoyances: drivers backing into parking spaces (when did this become a thing), pickups flying flags in the bed, electric bikes faster than motorcycles whizzing down sidewalks. Throw in a visit to a wonderful South Park bookstore yesterday that featured exactly zero of my books (ask any author, and that infraction is a sure cause for despair. We all want to walk in and see an end cap dedicated to our work — and hopefully get recognized by a sales clerk). It all adds up to one of those weeks where it's easier to see every negative thing in life instead of all the amazing things that happen each and every day. I don't admit to feeling my age, but this week I behaved very much like a cranky old man.
Then I watched John Wick 3. Calene and I are logging some serious streaming time this summer: Ted Lasso, The Bear, Platonic. We've watched the new Tom Segura special. Even the Taylor Swift doc (I can see the fascination). Now we're having a John Wick week. It's one of those franchises we'd heard of but never watched. So we viewed 1 and 2 a couple days ago. Tonight we're closing out 4. But 3 was last night, and if you have not watched, I would advise this: save it for one of those weeks when obstacles are coming out of the woodwork. Because in the third movie, the entire world is out to kill John Wick. Everyone. He has no friends. He loses a finger. He can't trust anyone. Calene believes his cortisol levels must have been off the charts. Wick is excommunicado, hunted wherever he goes.
And of course, Keanu finds a way to come out ahead — or so we are led to believe. Otherwise there wouldn't be a 4. But when you watch a guy with life or death problems and enemies everywhere, real life actually feels pretty damn rosy. I woke up feeling like I don't have a care in the world. Thank you, John Wick.
I know. I know. This isn't remotely funny. I don't think we're going to get there this week, because this is where the conversation turns to something pretty heavy. And by heavy, I mean prayer.
Callie and I were talking about people who use prayer as pixie dust, shouting magical words to heaven like a kid wishing for a pony (full confession: I do it). And when their prayers aren't answered, they often believe they're being punished. You know, God keeping score. This was our morning coffee conversation.
Credit: Etsy
Yes, we start the day like that — a John Wick recap straight into prayer. At the point in the morning when we could have just stayed in our pajamas and spent the day reading, we decided to get dressed and go to church, which is where the message was about . . . prayer. No right or wrong, good or bad, worthy or unworthy way to do it. Sometimes they get answered. Sometimes they don't. If we've learned anything in these months of cancer, it's the uselessness of worry, busy-ness, or anxiety. Fear is always just below the surface masquerading as some other issue like crazy moms. Never goes away. Constant excommunicado.
But the process of finding the words to fashion a prayer, whether you believe in it or not, seems to provide hope. And like a hard shot of faith tequila, hope takes the edge off fear and hard weeks. Sometimes, when hope just isn't strong enough, God throws in a little something else to make the burden more bearable.
Am I saying John Wick 3 was the answer to prayer? Sure. Life is nothing if not a Divine comedy.