“8 Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. 9 Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing. 10 For “Whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit; 11  let him turn away from evil and do good; let him seek peace and pursue it. 12  For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.” 13 Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? 14 But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, 15 but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, 16 having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. 17 For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil. 18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, 19 in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, 20 because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. 21 Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.” (1 Pe 3:8–22 ESV)

The void as one-by-one individuals reckon with their own personal battles: we are emotive and emu, because it isn’t a crowd, a mass email, a lunge in the dark, but each Individual is curator and agent of an Experience sublime, personal, individualistic, and heartily-important.

That void is the presence of Cheer when the rug is pulled out beneath the feet, it is the stalwart Obsession or OCD, as hey we’re actually matter-of-factly at War, here. The situation is elevated. The hackles are raised. Long Calm, the quelling of innate tendencies to Declare War, now subdued but not forever thus subdued: we are operatives of a New War that has curated such Specialness in individual Reaching Out, contact point Made, simple reasons for the season, of seasonal Gratitude, of Seven-Day Creation marvel, of some Prayer Network unexplored, forgotten, not quite believed upon. That these types, too, do pray. That Prayer has reckoned us citizens of a calmer and less bellicose, rather, to a sublime and thoughtful Listening tendency. Prayer has given us a moment’s respite, to Hear the other perspective, to allow intruding thoughts to go peace and rested.

Intruding thoughts, not so much our typical fare, but rather the Fright Factor of what we might one day Become, our fears of being slandered and worse: of giving in to the slander, in some small part. All of us need high expectations to be set, to be instantiated over our Persons. We need the emu third-eye Divinity spoken into the void, into the abyss, tandem ministries of Absolution Pronounced betwixt conversational partners.

The solo journey, then, rediscovered, as momentary Heights give way to soldiering along minus accoutrements, minus sisterly, brotherly Compassionate Embrace, we are cultured around innate Calling and innate Here-I-Go-And-No-Further learned Humility. Others may be superior, turtles all the way down and such. Others may have things that to the uninitiated are reason for Jealous strivings and Jealous hatreds. We, in our turn, are calmly copacetic with the Joy of Christian Calling, Duty, agentic Enterprise, not to put our mandate down in lesser matters but rather—in the spirit—to speak simply out of a place of Gratitude.

Gratitude that sometimes life “just works” (says the ones who drank in strife with their mothers’ milk), we are Grateful for the lance-point of hearty rumors Spread in the good sense of the word “rumor”, of marriages and bequests, of Decisions and those long-awaited Communiques, communications made, things others take as a given, as in stride, but for us, the waiting and fasting has made them all of a sudden so Special.