Can you fucking believe it snowed again???!!! Jeepers. I was so looking forward to my walk, today in particular, b/c I am joining a new church. Or thinking about it, anyway. A really pretty one here in my little neighborhood. I was really looking forward to an incredible spring morning today to go take my walk and wind up at the church for my 10 AM meeting. Now instead, I must get the dogs & the sled out of storage!!

Okay, it's not that bad. I'm sure it will all melt away by midday and then we're supposed to have an incredibly killer week of gorgeous weather ahead of us -- just in time for Good Friday and then Easter.

Loyal readers of this lofty blog will note that, no, I'm not much of a church-goer. I am not really a believer in organized religions, per se. My beliefs are culled from so many different places, but mostly from New Thought philosophers. And yet I have always been somebody who has prayed a lot.  And last month when I was in NYC and stopped in at St. Malachy's, it felt incredible to be inside an actual church again -- to pray in a nearly empty church. I realized I missed that a lot. In NYC, I could do that all the time, since there are so many churches and you can just walk right into them and pray. Leave a dollar, light a candle, and feel like you've connected with something beyond your own rattling insanity for a change. (Okay -- my own rattling insanity! You probably have nothing to do with this!)

Oddly enough, I find that in good times more so than bad, I am always feeling like I want to pray. But I just don't like being around other people. Having to interact with them and all that -- unless I know for sure that they have reasonably similar beliefs to mine. (I was an active member of the First Church of Religious Science in NYC for many years, and for ten years, I was a member of the LA Church of Religious Science on Wilshire Blvd.) But now, I just want to go some place alone and pray. So I talked to the people at this new church and asked them if it were possible for me to just come by really early every morning and be alone and pray and they said, yes, come on over. So off I'm going to at least meet them.

Really loyal readers of this lofty blog will no doubt recall that there are actually two churches in my neighborhood. What I call the Good Church and the Bad Church. The bad one looks dark and gloomy and foreboding; like they actively engage in witch hunts. The no-steeple variety with not much in the way of windows. It doesn't exactly shout: "Come on in, you little non-believer, you!"

Whereas the Good Church has an amazing amount of windows and you can just tell the sanctuary is filled with light pouring through all that stained glass. That's what I'm after; that feeling that God or whatever divine higher creative power is "out there/in here" is celebrated in some overtly lovely way. (I'm not a big fan of austerity.) Anyway, here's a rendering of the church, but you can't see all the windows from this view; they're on the other side.



First on my list of things to pray for is: "Please, God, melt the snow. "

GOD: "What is it with you? First you say 'send snow.' Then you say, 'send more snow -- I just love snow!,' and then it's  'please, send even more snow.' So I send even more snow. Then it's all about, 'Please God, enough with the snow already!!'"

ME: "But I do love snow. I just don't want it in the spring; I only want it in the winter."

GOD: "You strike me as somebody who doesn't know what the hell she wants half the time."

ME: "And what about the other half of the time?"

GOD: "That's when you're out of your fucking mind and I don't even bother listening to you."

ME: "Really? Is that so? And is that why you're always dashing off to the kitchen to do the dishes when I'm flailing around at my absolute lowest? "

GOD: "Yes it is. Because it's the only time I can get any peace from you, Marilyn. You know I can't hear you when the water's running."

Oh ha ha ha. I don't really pray for God to send and/or melt snow. And I kind of have my own version of God anyway. But I am indeed facing a towering amount of work with Manhattan, Mon Amour (my upcoming memoir). The only way through it is prayer -- and a veritable deluge of inspiration from the muse. I am going to be working him overtime -- I can already guarantee that. Ready or not, though, here we go, gang.

Well, have a heavenly Friday wherever you are and thanks for visiting!! I mean that. I love you, gang. See ya.