S.L. Pritchard

When I pray, I address a person. Do you do that? I have to believe there is a being somewhere out there that is listening intently, guiding me, protecting me, seeing down the road a ways, ready to warn me when things are about to get rough. I guess that is one way to describe god. When I was little, family members tried to teach me - from their Christian points of view - what god was all about. The thing I disliked the most about that view of god was how pre-packaged and processed it seemed. This is what Jesus looked like. This is what heaven looks like. This is what happens when you go up there and get to meet up with dead relatives and your childhood puppy and you never have to worry about getting fat in heaven. No one is crying, no one is sad. No one is suffering, no one does anything bad. My six year old questions were about baths and food and bedtime and parents not living together. My perspective was from the point of view of a curious kid who really couldn't figure out the

     It's been a strange season of trying to bind up old wounds, clean up forgotten messes, mend some fences, and other such silly sayings. Some of those situations are my doing, some not. And I'm not at all sure why I felt compelled to seek out people from my past or revisit experiences that went unresolved. It just happened that way. I reached out, I found a few things that I could do to put things right, but most everything that was unfinished or unresolved was just gonna hafta stay that way. I'm sure that's normal & natural for everyone. It's not that I feel the "end is coming" or anything like that. It's more like, this chapter is ready to close and I want to have a quick review to see if there's anything I can do to make things smoother, take off some of the rough edges here and there. I dislike leaving a mess behind, whether it's at a friends house after spending a weekend, or a hotel room bed all unmade, or even a camp site. I like