At Thanksgiving, I’m grateful for St. Porphyrios who says, “You won’t become saints by hounding after evil. Ignore evil. Look towards Christ and he will save you” (137).
Ignore evil. Maybe I need to stay away from the amateur punditry that passes for Facebook and only serves to jump into my thoughts, shagging them with Facebook’s ideas of what I should think. I can’t bear the fragmentation that comes with posts spooling by—dead pets, lost pets, fury at Trump, the cold civil war, fury at Congress people agitating for a coup, fear we are wide open to our enemies.
In How Stringfellow Learned to Listen, Chris Green and David Harvey spoke to this:
“And it struck me that right now, kind of in our cultural moment, thanks to social media, all that goes with that, the political upheaval, the so-called polarization, all that stuff, that the forces of evil at work in this world are empowered by, they’re energized by the way that I consume it, right? So that sitting at the table of demons, again, it’s not a metaphor, but it does point to the way in which I’m contributing, helping to contribute, I’m allying with a lot of destruction in the world by consuming it, so that it is energized. And one of the ways that I think that comes clearest is how the algorithm is fed by the way in which I allow outrage to fix my attention on it, right?”
Ignore evil. But my phone is a library of good words. There’s even the Daily Office. But I can’t take my eyes off the chaos. I can’t stop looking at the replays of buildings burning, hillsides burning, people falling from gunshot. Fear and outrage makes me come alive. Happiness feels like betrayal. There’s nothing to talk about if you’re at peace.
Don’t give the powers your attention. You carry a demon in your pocket.
Ignore evil. The darkness that rises around the holidays that remind me Bruce and I have no family living close by. Locally, it seems people don’t share their families during the holidays. Both our families gone home to their true home. My grief can collapse into loneliness can collapse to the question who will watch over us in our frail old age? That fear can collapse to our state passing a right to die bill. The pressure to take the kill shot could mask itself as the most loving act, when maybe receiving the work of tending the frail elderly, is a work that rains down light.
Ignore evil but grieve the losses that come with being 70: stairs hard to climb, tasks take longer to get done, friends going home to be with Jesus, days where I forget routine tasks, and my fingers don’t work, dread at what’s over the horizon with a body that must grow weary. Tears are good. Let Him draw near and wipe your tears like he promised.
Ignore evil: I have tried to create a community but that did not work. Four friends, I thought were close, walked away after my horse died. I did not make the cut in their busy lives. Like an arthritic limb, when rain comes, the ache of those rejections, one right after another, rises. The Killjoy says do more than remember, lose confidence in knowing how to be a friend.
But St. Paul says,
“But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead. I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Phil 3: 13 -14, ESV).
So bless the ache and bless them for leaving room for new friends. Bless them for leaving room for beloved friends.
Ignore evil—the lies that no one is buying what you have to offer. I look sideways at writers with thousands of followers. With books they didn’t have to pay to publish. All these years of work. Of steady craftsmanship. Of close to literary publication but no, nope. And not a big enough audience to pay for self-publishing. But I have you, my dear readers, who honor me by attending to my words every week. Like I said—lies.
And just like that, darkness bubbles like billowing smoke from a burning house. And I see the temptation for what it is—an invitation to “gloom and despair and agony on me,” like the off-key song from the old 70’s TV show Hee Haw. That billowing smoke is nothing more than the Killjoy’s farts.
The wind roared. It’s painful to go outside. The kind of wind that makes you wonder if a branch will crack and knock you in the head. I listened hard. I heard squeaks. I wondered if they were one of the barn cats. Tyger likes to talk to us. But they were just gates pushed around. Mrs. Horse protests the dark and the wind.
This Thanksgiving I vacuumed and let the dogs run in the yard Bruce blessedly fenced in. And enjoyed Bruce’s good cooking. And read Frank Schaeffer’s The Gospel of Zip, remembering him as a friend and letting his good words soak like a warm bath, about how he built his marriage and repented of being mean to his wife. Our solitude, Bruce and I, welled up. The quiet was good.
St. Porphyrios says,
“Instead of standing outside the door, shooing the evil one away, treat him with disdain. If evil approaches from one direction, then calmly turn the opposite direction” (135).
And so I did. I don’t feel powerful, but it’s amazing how the simple words: “The Lord rebuke you” carry power. The blacker than black thoughts that aren’t my thoughts evaporate.
Ignore evil. Instead of digging down to a dry well, that is dry, dry, dry. And my mind swims. And all I want is to be alone with good words, God’s words, and sit in the pain of exhaustion. And all I can do is sit. Leave it and take a nap.
St. Porphyrios again:
“If evil comes to assault you, turn all your inner strength to good, to Christ. Pray, ‘Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me.’ He knows how and in what way to have mercy on you.”
He knows how and what way to have mercy: Orion bright out the picture window in the middle of the night. His shoulders his belt, his feet, hurt my eyes. Light from the next town over, bright like a great dawn rising. The headlamp of the train appearing, moving slowly through the valley, heading east. Her sound rising to a roar, holding awhile, then falling. Mrs. Horse big, beautiful, powerful. Her presence a particular mercy. My footsteps on the barn floor. On the grass. On the wood floor. Grounded. At sunset jets high, drawing lines across the sky, starting a thought but not finishing.
St. Porhyrios says,
“And when you have filled yourself with good, don’t turn anymore towards evil. In this way you become good on your own with the grace of God. Where can evil find a foothold? It disappears!”
Then the sun pushes back the cloud deck, at sunset. And throws magenta against it. Even though the wind still roars through the night. The next day the sun tops the horizon, despite the cold warms by face and blinds my eyes. I’ve said before it’s like a lover’s caress holding my cheek for a long smooch.
Works Cited
Porphyrios, Saint. Wounded by Love. Harvey. Evia, Greece.
Green, Chris. Speakeasy Theology: How Stringfellow Learned to Listen, Nov 13, 2025
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