The bulk of my religious growing up was me telling myself all the things I should believe in, repeating over and and over again bits of the Bible I could not yet fully buy. Do not worry, consider the lilies of the field. How one stopped worrying, how one let perfect love cast out all fear, was never fully explained.

Last night when I hear Dick Gregory say: I learned a long time ago that fear and God cannot occupy the same space, it is like at last I am ready to say Amen. All this year I have been under the miracle kiss of this. How full of terrors my life was. God was always there, but he was at a distance and these days he has moved up quicker. He is the first thing I stumble to in the morning, singing his praise, lifted up by his nimble fingers. He is in the lighting of the candles, the baruching of the atah adonoying and then elohaiming of the melech haolams. Gradually, together, as we move through praise and then through solemn memory, and then praise again and dedication and repentance, as we move through the acknowledgement of dark things I do not understand and redemptions not done before we come to asking, day by day, and hour by hour we undo the knots of distrust, of fear, or dis-grace that all the years have weaved.