Kyle Minor - Praying Drunk

“Visions. Gold dust.”

“Gold dust?”

“There have been meetings where the Spirit of God has come down and the manifestation was gold dust that began to appear on everyone’s shoulders.”

“Manifestations, like the jerking to the left.”

“I’m not going to say anymore if you’re going to mock everything.”

“Honestly, I’m not mocking. I really want to know. Tell me about the visions.”

“Once I was praying in the Spirit, and I had a vision of a golden vessel.”

“Like a ship?”

“Like a vase or a container. It was on a cloth of purple silk. There was an angel there, and he was holding out his hands.”

“What did the vision mean?”

“For a long time I didn’t know what the vision meant. But then my friend who is a prophetess — quietly, quietly a prophetess, like, literally, hardly anybody knows. She said it was a message about being a vessel for the Spirit, and about a royal calling, but I had to give myself to it.”

“That’s why you write the magazine articles?”

“That’s why I’m writing the books. That’s why I’m traveling around so much. To speak into people’s hearts and lives.”

“But you like it, too. You’re good at it. You don’t want to work at a desk job.”

“That’s true. I don’t want to be chained to a desk. I was made this way for a reason.”

“Any other visions?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me.”

“Another time. Later.”

“All right. It’s a lot to risk, right? Telling me all these things?”

“It’s nothing to risk. I already have given myself over to all of it.”

“I can wait. I want to get to know you.”

“Would you hold me now?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t come over here inside my blanket. You stay inside your blanket and I’ll stay inside my blanket, and you can hold me that way, with the separate blankets.”

•

“Do you like it here?”

“I’m uncomfortable here.”

“Why?”

“I don’t like the cold, and I don’t like all the soldiers in their uniforms, and I don’t like all the military songs. I think I might be a pacifist.”

“But these are the men and women who give their lives to keep us free.”

“I like watching the football game, and I don’t mind cheering for Air Force, but I am uncomfortable with the whole martial atmosphere. It seems to me to have a lot to do with death and killing.”

“But sacrificial death and killing, don’t you think? Not death or killing that anyone wants to do.”

“I don’t know if that’s true. That’s what basic training is for, I think. To break down the part of a person’s conscience where they have this inhibition against killing, so they can want to kill, so they can kill at will, to save their lives or save their buddy or fulfill their mission.”

“I think that’s a selfish way to think about it. Because it’s because of these guys and gals here that you have the freedom to say something like that.”

“I can’t deny it. I know that’s true. That complicates the way I feel about it.”

“You are shivering. Here, let’s combine our blankets.”

“Can we put them under our legs, too, because these bleachers are so cold.”

“You know, if you moved out here with me, I wonder if you could take the cold all winter, if this is what it does to you.”

“Are you really here for good? I mean, you were in Florida, and now you’re here, and you’ve been back and forth. But maybe you would just end up back in Florida.”

“I don’t want to be anchored anyplace. I want to be free to move around. But I like cold places. I wouldn’t mind moving to Alaska. My aunt has a hotel in Alaska. I like the idea of spending some time there with her, helping her run it for a while.”

“What if you — even we — had children? Wouldn’t you want to stay put for a while, for the sake of stability?”

“I don’t want to have children, ever. I mean, I love children. I think I would be an okay mother. But the things I’m meant to do with my life would, I think, make it very difficult to have children.”

“I didn’t know this about you, that you wouldn’t want children. It surprises me.”

“This is why it’s good, I think, you came out here. We need to sort these things out. We need to find out if we love each other.”

“I feel like you’re holding some things back.”

“That’s true, but here we are, and I want to watch this football game since I paid forty bucks each for the tickets.”

•

“Is it okay with you if I put my hand on your knee while I drive?”

“Yes. I’m very happy that you put your hand on my knee.”

“It’s interesting, you know. Whenever I relate to you in a physical way, you respond very positively. But whenever I relate to you in a spiritual way, it gets complicated, and I don’t know how to read you, exactly.”

“I feel like in some ways they are different issues.”

“I don’t think they are in any way separable.”

“I feel like the physical expressions of love are very important and they mean something.”

“I don’t disagree. That’s why I won’t let you kiss me.”

“But it’s strange. You will let me do other things that seem to me to be more intimate than kissing is.”

“I feel like if you and me were kissing, I would be giving myself over to you in a way that I’m not ready to do.”

“Why is that?”

“Because I think that spiritually we are in very different places. I think you’re open to spiritual things, but I don’t think that you are really very far along. And I can’t tell if you are open to them because you really desire them or if you are just open to them because you want to be closer to me.”

“That’s a fair question to raise. I don’t know, either, sometimes. There’s a lot of things going on very quickly, and it can be confusing to me.”

“Also, I don’t know if I love you.”

“Do you think love is some kind of lightning flash? Like it strikes you and then the reverberations just ring out forever?”

“That’s how love is with God, I think. And I think that’s one thing you haven’t really entered into the fullness of.”

“I think that maybe love is a choice that people make.”

“That’s not very romantic.”

“I don’t know what good romance is, sometimes. I mean, it’s good to be romantic, and it’s good to have feelings. But I’ve had feelings for people before, and they’ve had feelings for me, but what was lacking, I think, was a choice to make a life together. A commitment.”

“It’s very scary to me to hear you speak that way. Because it seems very mechanical to me. It seems in keeping with many of the things that seem cold about you, to me. Everything seems so reasoned, so calculated. It makes me think that everything about the way you approach me must be some kind of calculation.”

“If that were true, though, wouldn’t I just tell you everything you wanted to hear all the time? It seems to me evidence of good faith that we have these kinds of conversations all the time, and that we have these, for lack of a better word, arguments, or disagreements.”

“I don’t enjoy arguing or disagreeing.”

“Me either.”

“I’m just going to keep my hand on your leg here, except when I have to shift gears, until we get up to the top of the mountain, okay? I just want to enjoy the ride and enjoy you and enjoy this kind of closeness while we look at the mountains and enjoy the creation and all its wonder. It’s not a slight to you. It’s just something I need right now, if it’s all right with you. But I want to keep my hand on your leg, okay?”

“Of course. I love that you have your hand on my leg. It is really nice.”