It is perhaps that misplaced guilt and a regret about sins, lost, forgotten, long forgiven. It is perhaps that failure to fully embrace and appreciate the depth of Christ’s mercy. It is the futile and foolish sense that one’s own evil somehow overwhelms the grace of God. I pray one day that I may see Him face to face and be awash with his mercy, to know, to see and to truly understand how much God may forgive us, how much he has forgiven us, how resolute and prodigious our redemption has been.

I know I needn’t fear, although I know I mustn’t rest. Fear isn’t always misplaced. A fear of God’s justice has a place in our lives. To fear our own sin and the repercussions of it is only right and good. But it must be balanced. We must recognise, above all things, the power of God to wash away our iniquity. Rather than be overwhelmed by terror, we should rather be consumed by a complete and utter, devastating gratitude.

Thank God for all He has granted us, for all he has forgiven us. And move forward, of course, with a resolution to sin no more. Perhaps when I worry where I left the bodies, I should remember that they were buried by a tomb that was hewn into stone. Did they overhear the gentle discourse of Mary Magdalene and the man she thought was the gardener, the man who was in truth, no less than our Lord and our God? This is where those bodies lie, and sing, and await with a hope that has already come, and been, and lived among us. Glory to God.

I picture my beloved, beleaguered wife at the other end.

‘Why did you bring all those notebooks?’

‘Do you really need your laptop?’

‘Maybe you should have worn clothes, instead of just that hat and a fig leaf?’

‘You forgot to bring X, the only thing I asked you to bring that underpins our family’s very survival for the next 24 hours, and is required immediately to prevent utter and impending catastrophe?’

I to to check into my flight (Is that the term? Did I do it wrong?) and imagine the genial gentleman telling me I bought my ticket to fly from Albury, Hungary, instead of NSW. I picture Rod Dreher boarding a flight, an empty seat beside him that was meant to be mine (damn, he can write, can’t he?). Or the man behind the desk will look at my backpack and ask, puzzled, ‘Were you expecting to take that on board the flight?’ Well, of course, everybody else has a bag, don’t they? Maybe they bought their luggage a ticket? What do I know?

When other passengers waiting to board ask each other questions, I listen in with a desperate curiosity. What do they know to ask that I haven’t even thought about? What wonderful capacity to manage this process do they have, that I couldn’t even imagine? Of course all sorts of people fly. One man nearby belches loudly, trying to manage the gassy consequences of his energy drink. If he can do this, surely I can. All sorts of people fly all the time. I have the occasional paranoia that every other passenger is looking at me, bemused: doesn’t he know he has to _________?

‘Did you go through security?’ one friendly woman asks another. Security? Is that different to what I did? Did I go through security? Will they stop me as I attempt to board? This is him, the guy that tried to skip security! My futile explanations will do little to avert my arrest. At least I’m not naked this time.

I see another woman reading the instructions on the ‘baggage allowance TEST UNIT.’ Surely the upper case letters are a bit much. Should I be testing my baggage in the TEST UNIT? She decides against using it, but she knows something I don’t. Once announcement follows another. Smoking and vaping are not allowed on the tarmac. Damn it, I don’t smoke cigarettes or vape, I can’t believe they’re telling me that they’re not letting me even consider not doing that thing I never do. Where does it end?

I have to post this before I board, to know that my final, weary, anxious musings aren’t lost in the wreckage. Someone tell my long suffering wife I made coffee at home so as not to buy one here at the terminal. She has to know. Yes, I’m naked, I brought nothing, I failed to clear security, and the carry on baggage I forgot doesn’t pass the TEST UNIT I didn’t use. I can’t even console myself by taking up vaping and blowing that strange steam out on the terminal, like some kind of confident, tar laden, post industrial dragon man.

But I saved five bucks on the coffee. That has to count for something. But that snotty, blotchy toddler keeps staring at me through the glass panelling separating our gates… What does he know that I don’t?

Everything, atrophies and dies if you don’t attend to it. Love, addiction, prayer hostility, strength, discipline and desire. In any number of ways I can become a stranger to myself. This can tend towards virtue, as much as it can tend towards sloth. A simple, humble ambition can wither and die, weathering the storms of daily life.

A recurring theme can become what now, or what next, as you prepare to stare down the latest, random embodiment of chaos in your life. You know that so many have it far, far worse than you do, so ever and always you count your blessings. You thank God for the abundance of His graces, and you know that perhaps in the final estimation, some of your disciplines inevitably become luxuries.

Over time they gather dust... the clink and thunk and clank of the weight plates a distant memory. The padding around your waistline grows. Your sleep is bent and broken, tortured by late nights and sluggish starts. You must, of course; you must, kick and fight and rail. I You must, of course, spit and curse the slow death that chases you down. You must, of course, return to the balm of scripture and prayer, return to the rule of life that made you the man that you are, that sustained you in darkness and woe.

You must load the bar and start over. You must humbly face the loss and the limitation of 100 nights wasted in order to build back up again without breaking yourself in the process. You must allow thought to take line shape and form on the page before you and send that word out into the ether that someone or anyone may be touched by it.

Bury your finger into that wrist. Find the pulse. You are a child of God, and you are not dead, yet.

Creatively, there are seasons of abundance, prolificacy, wonder. And of course, they’re balanced by the dryer times. I read of Murakami, of routine, relentlessness. I value it, from afar, but am struck down day after day by the domestic and rudimentary demands of us mere mortals. I could be better, I know, but I realise it takes days, weeks, seasons of the tender labour of sowing, tending, before finally reaping.

As I write, a child wakes for the third time tonight, and stumbles out weeping to find someone to reset his blanket. I take leave from my leave, and set things right before I return to this. Clearing the debris, the detritus, that waters may flow again.

It’s not the journalling itself that grants these days their meaning, of course. The observations and events likely aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. It’s the deliberate act of chronicling them that grants some semblance of integrity, of a logic that connects the events, the details into a meta narrative that may, one day, reflect something of the plan that our good Lord had for my life.

It is prayer that sanctifies work; not the labour in and of itself, which may be undertaken with a spirit of resentment and futility. When I journal, I recognise my self, my being, and my existence as willed by a loving Father who guides, directs, leads, drawing me silently onwards. And when I lay my scrawling down on the page, I try to make sense of His will for me, and am able to see how well, or how poorly I’m playing my part.

And this dispatch is of course, a deliberate act of being - a moment in the day to mark, measure and affirm the love I have for the written word and all it can entail, in mystery, in will, in truth. It’s a humble love letter to a life of letters, tracing my finger in the sand, tipping my hat to anyone who may wish to care, or to do the same and scratch the line of memory and mastery upon a forgiving wall.

People are altogether rather interesting. We’re all such open books, really, in so many ways. For some reason the delicate balance of sterility and banality creates a stark white backdrop against which our eccentricities are laid bare, clarified and amplified for all to see. Our persnicketiness and peculiarity is framed by a 3x3m window to amplify the effect, in an ‘overflow’ ward of about ten beds. I note the characters around me. The difficult customer. The silent sufferer. The weeper. The curmudgeon. The empath. The larrikin. The everyman. All to be loved in their own ways.

I see so much suffering in here, and find myself falling into a silent prayer again and again. You don’t know who has faith in here. Who has some. Who has none. We all toil against the vagaries of our broken bodies and fallen natures, battling the bleeding, the infection, the disease, the rot and the ruin, and the first question you want to ask, is of course banished from polite public discourse. Are you a believer? Which is of course to ask - do you have a framework of faith and reason against which you can map this pain, this loss, or this confusion?

Perhaps you can feel it. The ennui, or outright despair that supplants faith. The references to the solaces, consolations and distractions that lack the elegance and beauty of a different kind of life; a different kind of relationship to our Lord and His creation. Diet Coke. White bread. Cigarettes. A charged phone. Validation. Honour. Pain. A decent meal. Good coffee. TikTok. You can guess which are mine and which are other peoples. I’m as fallen and distracted as anyone. But your heart extends, reaches, in an anonymous yearning, a prayer of intercession, a quiet, loving bemusement, for the the charming, motley rabble that surrounds you.

And God help them, what must they think of me? How do I appear to them? That self absorbed, hobbling isolate that spends too much time with his laptop, utterly crawling through The Two Towers, or taking calls from his thousand children. Unmoored from home, I am lovesick. I miss my beloved, long suffering wife. I miss our kids. I miss the our charming goats, the irate sheep and the chickens and the alpacas. I miss the paddocks. I miss the round of hay I have to visit twice a day. I miss our impetuous dogs. I miss the noise, the mess, the beauty of the hills, like some incredible watercolour wrapped around our humble little acreage.

I miss our parish, the brothers and sisters in Christ with whom we worship and Commune. I miss the Mass, with a liturgy more beautiful and edifying than we could ever deserve. I miss my real breviary, and our little altar. I miss my music room, my guitars and my pedalboard. I miss the broken couches in the lounge room. I miss the tired rug in our library. I miss the bookshelf. I miss the verandah, with our outrageously long table to fit the beautiful rabble I call my family.

They are the “blood of my heart,” to quote my beloved Dai Bando from John Ford’s masterpiece. And this, dear reader, is who I am, and all I have to offer. Substack hosts an awe-inspiring array of theologians, philosophers, authors, artists, poets, academics, literary prodigies. All I have for you are my prayers, my reading, my quiet life in a quiet little town. I have Carmel, and my vocation. I have a wife I adore, and our eleven children. I have music and song, and a dear love of writing, and the creative endeavour, with a contemplative longing at the heart of it all.

For now, I am this. This is what I have and what I share, and if you’ve made it this far, perhaps we’ll cross paths again. Praised be Jesus Christ - Now and forever.

It is an end of course, that is hastened by the atrophy of prayer, silence, reading, art, writing. We can peer around us and see the world littered with the bodies of the malcontents, the bitter and the burnt that set aside their creative impulse, their vision, their playful engagement with the talents and insights God has granted them. To let the instrument gather dust is a sin, unless you’ve set it aside to better serve He who put it in your hands in the first place.

But the sickness, the atrophy can spur us into renewal, conversion and awakening. Sometimes the sin, or the torpor serves to shock and appal one enough to flee from it, into the loving arms of the Father who will leave the house to meet us before we even reach it. I must tap the vein that grants such a wonderful sense of life in the creative act, the word set upon the page, to remember who I am again.

I sit in the precious little nook where I used to write so often, littered with the detritus of a thousand lives. I clear baskets. I find the pen, the paper, the pursuit, that only lasts from one word to the next as they trace themselves across the page. I follow them, from one line to the next, and know that I am alive.

You shall see, and your heart shall rejoice;

your bones shall flourish like the grass;

and it shall be known that the hand of the LORD is with his servants,

and his indignation is against his enemies.

Isaiah 66: 14 - 16

Translations are useful for us who don’t read English of course, and one is included in the Kavanaugh translation of his collected works. It’s a beautiful diagram to ponder, with the crowning statement upon the mount being: only the honour and glory of God dwells on this mount. Leave all else behind - hence the psalmist’s insistence on clean hands and a pure heart. If your Lenten penances aren’t clearing these distractions, you need to reassess quickly and resolutely.

The didactic statements at the base of the mount are beautifully, hauntingly simple, yet typical of his resolve and pure, unadulterated fidelity to the contemplative pursuit of God:

To reach satisfaction in all, desire satisfaction in nothing. To come to possess all, desire the possession of nothing. To arrive at being all, desire to be nothing. To come to the knowledge of all, desire the knowledge of nothing. To come to enjoy what you have not, you must go by a way in which you enjoy not. To come to the possession you have not, you must go by a way in which you possess not. To come to what you are not, you must go by a way in which you are not.

The last line, the sense of purgation, even negation, suggests stripping away anything and everything that is contrary to Christ, to our true selves, made in the image and likeness of God: You must go by a way in which you are not. One is reminded of Paul’s letter to the Galations: I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

We do not strip ourselves away to reach a void, or a nothingness - we seek the trinitarian God who dwells in the deepest recesses of our souls. We climb, we scramble, we try to leave behind the distraction, the dross and the disillusionment of our materialism, our self satisfaction, our own designs.

Then the heart again, in the scripture reading from this morning’s Lauds, taken from Joel:

Come back to me with all your heart, fasting, weeping, mourning. Let your hearts be broken, not your garments torn, turn to the Lord your God again, for he is all tenderness and compassion, slow to anger, rich in graciousness, and ready to relent.

If you needed any clearer illustration that we don’t flee from suffering (aside from Calvary itself), you won’t find much better. Sorrow, repentance and conversion - not the outward show, the morbid display of self pity - but the humble turn to a God who is all tenderness and compassion.

The consolations of the Office are manifest and multifold. If you’re looking to deepen your prayer life in the pursuit of a fruitful Lent, I couldn’t recommend it enough. Even with the awkward, fumbling beginnings we all have with the ribbons, the psalter, the propers, the feasts - the riches of scripture, the tenderness of prayer, the treasures of Holy Mother Church, held in the breviary, are unparalleled.

I marvel. I fumble. I climb and stumble. Grazed knees and torn knuckles are all part of the journey. You shouldn’t want it to be any other way.

Every self deception, every delusion, every fiction does dissolve of course, in adoration. The silence. The sense of awe. The astounding humility by which the Trinity comes to dwell in such a host. It is the incarnation, presented to us once more. It is the humility and sacrifice of the cross, once more. We kneel at Calvary, barely able to decide if we are to watch, wait and adore lovingly, or avert our gaze in crippling self awareness of every fall, every failure that might render us unworthy, had we not encountered our Lord in the gospels - Justice and Mercy have met, indeed.

And you remember, of course, the tender love, the devotion, the utter intention by which he breathes life into our being, and we rest. We gaze lovingly. We adore without fear.

We hear Him whisper: Be still, and know that I am God. I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth.

My wife is a wonder, when it comes to morning discipline. She rises at an unseemly hour. I’d call it ungodly but, she spends quite a lot of it with God, so it’d be nothing short of a misnomer. I, myself, have a limited capacity for such early exertions. It’s not that I don’t respect, or desire them. It’s making peace with a plain and simple truth that my own disciplines are best actualised in the solitude of the evening.

This is complemented by the reality that one of us needs to be up, aware, awake and parenting whist the other is undertaking her somnambulatory preparation for her morning edification. That, as well as the aesthetic congruence of some creative acts that only seem fitting for night. Diving into the sonic landscape of a given guitar pedal, to find the textures and nuances it offers both the player and the listener? Night. A solitary outing to the shed to grapple and toil beneath the bar? Night. Spiritual reading and prayer in the silence only possible when your eleven kids are asleep? Well, that could be morning (as my beloved, long suffering wife proves) or night - but I know myself, almost as well as I know her - and know that the night is only option at this point in our lives. For me, anyways.

Thus, sleep, yes, you were wonderful. Our occasional dalliances have likely kept me both alive, and sane, and for this, I could never thank you enough. But alas, it’s not you - it’s me. And the blank page. And the breviary. And the tape delay. And the barbell. I’m sure we’ll cross paths again.

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Then, there’s been the (unnecessary) ordeal of my custom domains. One worked just fine, whilst the other was trapped in some sort of dysfunctional, technological purgatory where DNS records feared to tread. Apparently it didn’t point to anything, but the fine bots and bleeps over at Hostgator assured me everything was just fine. It wasn’t. I’ve switched to Squarespace and it’s been smooth, easy sailing, with a clean interface that makes it all so much easier. So hey, I have my custom domains. But I’ve not yet been writing all that much. You don’t understand, I had to tweak my wordmarks and logos to give them a little something more, something clean and elegant. Something new. 

Gear culture and addiction in the guitar space can bear a similar burden. You’re always searching, always waiting for the right pedal, the best signal chain, the greatest tone, before you allow yourself to sit down and play the instrument. You need to set up your switcher, or midi controller, and program your presets, or find the right audio interface, the right reverb, the overdrive that captures your perfect sense of grittiness, and texture. So much keeps you from the art itself, and you can find countless Reddit posts and Youtube videos about people sacrificing every creative impulse in the hedonistic and materialistic pursuit of the next thing, drunk on the thrill of ‘the chase.’ It’s the same drug, just in a different form. 

I’ve been enjoying Notes. Other people’s notes. With some kind of scrupulous trepidation, that is. I’ve long abandoned Twitter, Facebook and their ilk, trying to maintain a cognitive clarity that has been largely safeguarded, by avoiding the random, frenetic barrage of other people’s ideas, outbursts, observations, and life experiences - so often fickle, banal, glib. The freedom that came from not having to constantly try to think of something clever and funny to share also came as a great relief. But Substack notes have been, for the most part, coherent, articulate, provocative, occasionally inspiring. They keep pointing me to new writers and pieces that I actually, quite enjoy.  

So here I am, waiting for the right moment to post a note, to point to the works that have been in motion for some years now. My writing is haphazard, sporadic, usually at the whims of family life, fatigue and if I’m honest with myself, the sloth and inertia of my own creative agency, at the whims of and vagaries of a given emotional state on any given day. I’m not good at shrugging off the dross of the day and getting the work done. I love writing. Truly. It grants a wondrous sense of calm and clarity that reminds me of Mr Gruffyd’s definition of prayer in How Green Was My Valley: “Good, clean, direct thinking.” 

As much as I adore the film, I find his definition of prayer to be more than a little bereft of an intimate exchange with God, but his advice around cognitive acuity is sound: 

Think well what you're saying.

Make your thoughts into things that are solid,

and in that way

your prayer will have strength.

And that strength will become

a part of you, body, mind and spirit.

So here I am, on occasion, making my thoughts into things that are solid. And then I’m going to stop procrastinating and post a note, instead of allowing the fear of falling, failing, not having the right post up to enchant the possible reader - to stop me from reaching out to these fine people. To you, dear reader.

At Wristwatches and Radios, I write about fatherhood; fidelity; culture and creativity. Two Thieves is more of an eclectic mix of observations on life, Catholicism, discipline, music, guitar, literature and film. For what it’s worth, I’m glad to make your acquaintance. I hope you stick around. I hope I do too. 

You could be tempted to take it for granted, but you know better, and hang on to it with both hands, while it can last, as long as it can last. 

The mix knobs are also set lower than I would have expected, to tame the echoes that can spring out and overwhelm your dry signal if you let them. A touch of bit crushing can be wonderful, and even cranking it can yield wonderful, fuzzy textures. And running it into dirt pedals is a dream. For this, I have it first in my chain, so I can even run it into my fuzz.

But this is after many nights of furrowed brow and fumbling tweaks. I’ve never really given it enough time to really appreciate it, and dial it in, and now? Now it all makes sense. We all intuit the reality that these things can’t be rushed, but we reject the pragmatic implication of what that means. Time taken. Time spent. Time applied. Every time. 

To have lost a father so young, and to become one, is a bittersweet prospect, and I had to wrestle with all manner of questions, qualms, notions and nonsense. Nothing in life is ever simple (except everything of course, in its own way). God’s providence nonetheless, remains for me a quality of as much beauty as mystery. When fatherhood was finally bestowed upon me - with a daughter as beautiful, wondrous and baffling as she still is, seventeen years later - it was on the feast of St Anthony.

The presence of a loving God, whose delicate hand chose that day, for that purpose, for this reason, is still a great joy in my life. As such, the presence of two fathers was with me, when I too joined their ranks. One day, just like every other father, I hope to earn the honour I’ve been bestowed.