get thee before me, Satan!

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I guess everyone has their own wish list, their own demands and hopes, when it comes to what they take seriously in life.

One of the demands I had when it came to spiritual life and my interest in it was this: "If it isn't relevant and at ease in the barroom, then it's not something I want to waste my time on."

The barroom ... the wild, entangling, loud, sorrow-provoking, juke-box-laced, cruel, silly, puke-on-the-floor, idiotic, delicious, unpredictable, overwhelming tsunami of some no-virtue-need-apply moment or series of moments. Any get-thee-behind-me-Satan longings I might have felt invariably found their harmonies in ... get thee before me, Satan; if, with what I have learned or hope to learn, there is no ability to stand up and stand straight, then, really, what a crock of shit!

I was never very impressed with virtue -- perhaps because I was never very good at it. Or perhaps because the juiciness of life would not be quelled and experience struck me as more sensible than its trappings.

And now, so many years later, looking back on those demands, looking back on a person who would make a hundred or a thousand mistakes under the imperative of those demands, I am rather surprised to find that I was right. Not "right" in the sense of selling my approach to anyone else, but rather "right" in the sense that for my purposes and in my experience, it was a demand that was correct and, in some sense, came true.

How nice to find out you were right from the get-go. At least I was right about something. Nice going, kid!

Get thee before me, Satan!
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