DEAR SEAN:

I had an unexpected medical emergency that took me out of my job as a first responder. The month before, I found out my mother has cancer. Also, my car broke down. So I can't return to work, and my temporary disability pay hasn’t gone through.

I'm useless. It seems like the world just doesn't want me here anymore. What happens if I give up and send myself same-day shipping to God? Would it truly be a loss?

There's no more fight in me.

DEAR FIRST-RESPONDER:

Little Opie Taylor was dressed for school, finishing up a daily breakfast of eggs, bacon, pork sausage, hamsteak, cheese grits, biscuits with pepper gravy, toast with jam, cinnamon buns, oatmeal cookies, pancakes, whole-fat milk, tomato juice, grapefruit juice, fresh-squeezed Florida orange juice, and a subcutaneous injection of insulin.

He asked his aunt Bee for a nickel. Back in those days, you needed a nickel to buy milk at school. No big deal, Aunt Bee thinks. She gives him the nickel.

It turns out, Opie had

already GOTTEN a nickel from his dad, Sheriff Andy Taylor. Come to find out, Opie had been slyly bumming nickels from everyone. Something fishy was definitely up.

Andy tries to ask Ope about it before bed, but Opie pretends to be asleep to avoid the question.

So the next day, Deputy Barney Fife decides to find out what’s going on. Barney is your man when it comes to recon work.

Barney follows Ope and finds out that—gasp!—a schoolyard bully named Sheldon is extorting nickels from him by threatening the subsequent delivery of a grade-A knuckle sandwich to the face.

And so it is, every day, little Ope sorrowfully reaches into his pocket and hands over his milk money.

With me so far?

Homegrown tomatoes. I love them. All kinds. Heirlooms, beefsteaks, superstars, Better Boys, Burmese sours, Cherokee purples, double-Ds, you name it.

A tomato is a magical thing. A love story in nutritional form. A tomato connects you with real life in a way nothing else can.

I want them room temperature. Sliced thick. Salted and peppered. Or placed onto a slab of soft white Bunny Bread, coated with enough Duke’s mayonnaise to suffocate a small woodland creature. Eaten as a sandwich.

Also, chocolate. Love it. We went to Spain recently, and there is chocolate everywhere. They sell it at every tienda, mercado, and café. I even bought chocolate once at the police station.

Since being home, I’ve developed a crippling addiction to cocoa. I’m plowing through a bar of chocolate every day or so. My wife sincerely believes that I would be easy to kidnap because I take chocolate from strangers.

Likewise, I love my dogs. I have three. Thelma Lou (bloodhound), Otis Campbell (alleged Labrador), and Marigold (American coonhound). They are not well-behaved dogs,

mind you.

Whenever company comes over to our house, for example, within seconds our dogs have coerced them into throwing balls and playing tug-of-war with various chew toys that resemble deceased hamsters. After only minutes in our home, many of our visitors suddenly remember urgent dental appointments.

And I love water. Big bodies of water. I love the lake, the Gulf, the rivers, whatever. I need water in my life.

American music. The old stuff. Fiddle tunes. Folk ballads. Old school R&B, when bands still had horn sections. And classic country before grown men wore glitter jeans. Old hymns.

I’m crazy about hymns. They hold a power over me I cannot shake. Why don’t we write spiritual songs like this anymore?

Many of the historic…

The letter was short. “Dear Sean, do you believe prayer works? I don’t. Please pray I survive my surgery today.” Signed, Anonymous.

Dear Anonymous, before they wheel you back, a few things:

New York, December, 2004, a national survey of 1,100 physicians, conducted by HCD Research and the Louis Finkelstein Institute found that 74 percent of doctors believe prayer-miracles have occurred in their career; 73 percent believe they can occur at any time.

Duke University doctors recently studied 20 heart patients. The patients didn’t know it, but their names were sent all over the world. To places like Nepal, Jerusalem, Baltimore, etc. Randomly selected people prayed for participants’ recovery. Patients performed approximately 50 to 100 percent better than patients who received no prayer.

At San Francisco General Hospital’s Coronary Care Unit, 393 patients participated in a double blind study on prayer. Participants remained blind throughout the study to prevent bias.

Those who received prayer had less need for mechanical ventilators; required less medications, diuretics, and

antibiotics; required less CPR; reported less occurrences of pulmonary edema, angina, congestive heart failure, and cardiac events. There were significantly fewer deaths.

In a study of 999 cardiac patients from Mid America Heart Institute of St. Luke’s Hospital, those who were unknowingly prayed for fared 90 percent better than heart patients who didn’t receive prayers.

The American Heart Journal studied the effect of prayer on 150 patients undergoing angioplasty with stent insertion. Participants were randomly assigned for prayer. The “prayed for” group reported significantly fewer complications than the control group.

Elisabeth Targ, a doctor at the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, studied the efficacy of prayer on 40 AIDS patients. Half of patients who received prayers from places as far away as Alaska and Puerto Rico required fewer hospitalizations.

In two similar studies that…

Oh, to view a sunrise.

To see that huge ball of brilliant orange light, peeking above the trees, reflecting on the mirrored lake. The orchestra of colors in the sky, as the morning sun lights the clouds from beneath, transforming them into the pink and gold frosting on the Birthday Cake of Life.

It’s a new day. It’s your day. Made just for you. All 8 billion of you. It’s our day. And the whole world is waking up to all the possibilities thereof.

A family of ducks flies in V-formation, hovering above the water. I hear their voices bouncing off the waves. I wonder what they’re saying. (“How come Harold always gets to fly at the front?”)

And in the faroff, there is the perpetual noise of a barking dog, reminding its negligent owner that, hey, the sun is up, so it’s time for said owner to get off his or her fat assumptions and feed them breakfast. This turns out to be my dog.

And everything just feels brand

new. Fresh. Perfect. Untainted. Newborn. Newfound. Newmade. Unspoiled. Original.

There have been one trillion six hundred fifty-eight billion one hundred ninety-five million sunrises since the earth was formed. And each one is STILL just like the first.

Sunrises have not changed in the last 5.453 billion years. Each dawn is identical to history’s inaugural sunup. And I think that’s nice.

Because, God knows, everything else on this planet has changed. Forests have been cut down. The Fruited Plains have been mowed over to make space for another Red Lobster, Ulta, and Best Buy. The Purple Mountains Majesty have all been bought by real estate developers. Everything is always changing, from Sea to Shining Oil Slick.

But not sunrises. Each daybreak is still unsullied by the hands of man. No corporation…

The boy didn’t have a lot going for him. At least, that’s what his parents first thought.

His parents were concerned. The other children would not stop laughing at their son. The other kids had turned him into a joke.

His name was Al. And there was something definitely different about the child. Foremostly, his speech. He didn’t speak until age 3. Not a word. Which means he never used any of the obligatory babytalk words like, “dada,” “mama,” “bye-bye,” and “poop.”

The doctors said it was a developmental delay. The long gaps between his verbal responses. Speaking only in fragments. Al didn’t start using complete sentences until age 4.

When his folks put him in school, it was hard going. The other kids teased him, incessantly giggling at him, whispering. He was bullied. Degraded. His teachers couldn’t connect with him. He was frustrated. He once threw a chair at his tutor.

The school was perpetually sending letters home, mostly about his behavior. He was a daydreamer, socially weird, he hated authority.

One teacher’s note said: “he will never get anywhere.” Another teacher said he was “mentally slow.”

The final straw was when a teacher’s note said the school was unable to teach this kid. So his exasperated mother purchased several books and tried teaching him at home.

Eventually, he found his way back to school, but he wasn’t your model student. And nothing had changed.

He still got crummy grades in geography, history, and languages. He still had a hard time making friends. Still disliked teachers, and all forms of authority. The kids still laughed.

By his teenage years, it was all he could take. He would inevitably leave school to join the prestigious ranks of us High-School Dropouts. (We were happy to have him as a club member.)

I’ve got your back today.

You don’t know me, but I’ve been watching you since you were a baby. I’ve been here beside you. You could call me your guardian angel, I guess. But we don’t really call ourselves anything.

Try not to think about the medieval depictions of us. Forget the wings and Grecian gowns. We’ve been trying to outlive that stereotype our whole lives.

We are not tall, muscular, blond, asexual creatures who wear glitter foundation and no underwear. There are no halos floating above our heads. Neither are we fat flying babies with bows and arrows.

What we are is highly advanced spirits who stand with you all the time. We are a cloud of witnesses to your entire life. Some of us have been human before. Throughout history, some have called us saints. Which is sort of ridiculous, because when we were on earth we were anything but “saintly.” Sometimes, we are the souls of your loved ones. Sometimes we are angels.

Either way, we are

a multitude of souls, sitting in the nosebleeds, watching your life play out. Some of us have been where you are. We have done what you’re doing.

Your religion is a funny thing. While nearly 80 percent of the world population believes in us, a lot of people are afraid to talk about our existence. Churches don’t mention us for fear they might sound like heretics. Ordinary people won’t talk about us because they don’t want to sound like they have been taking hallucinatory substances.

But 80 percent. Come on, people. Have you ever seen 80 percent of the globe agree on ANYTHING? Historically, humans can’t even agree on whether to use the metric system. But they agree on us.

Why? Because too many people have had experiences with us. There are septillions…

DEAR SEAN:

Shut up. You have no idea what you’re talking about. …Just who the hell do you think you are?

DEAR READER:

Who do I think I am?

My life begins at age 11. That’s when my father took his own life.

He killed himself probably because he was going to prison. The night before Daddy died, he was arrested for attempted murder, assault and battery, and threatening his family with a firearm.

He spent the night in county lockup. And I knew, as an 11-year-old boy, that he was freaking out. One of his worst fears was incarceration.

The last image of my father is imprinted on my brain. I am a little boy. Officers are reading Daddy his Miranda rights. My baby sister is screaming. My mother is battered and bloody. There are deputies in riot gear who entered our house with short-barrel shotguns.

And I’m saying goodbye to my father. Forever.

The next morning, his brother posts his bail. It's crazy expensive. He drops my father off at his house,

then goes to work. When my aunt gets home, her car comes charging into the garage, and she hits a body.

There’s a shotgun in the decedent’s hands. The body’s big toe is stuck in the trigger guard. It’s Daddy.

Nobody is ever the same.

Everyone is in shellshock. All the adults are worried about me because I’m not crying. They expect me to be a wreck, but I’m not. I’m just stunned. I can’t cry.

Oddly enough, I am relieved that he is dead. I am actually glad he’s gone. My father was so difficult to live with. He could fly off the handle at any moment. You never knew if you were getting Good Daddy or Abusive…

Be with them, Lord.

Comfort them. Embrace them. Bolster them. Ease their pain. Hold them like a parent holds a child. Give them uncommon strength during these present moments of horror.

Help them remember to eat. Help them remember to hydrate. Take care of their bodies. Because right now, many of them don’t care whether they live or die.

As I write this, 51 have been killed in the Texas floods, at least, and 15 are kids. The total of missing people isn’t even clear yet. What is clear is that 27 of them are girls who were attending Camp Mystic, a Christian youth camp on the River Guadalupe in Kerr County, the area worst affected.

Nearly 850 have been rescued, and 1,700 have been involved with the rescue operations.

So be with them, God. Be there in silent ways nobody would ever expect. Give them supernatural signs that their loved ones are still out there. Give comfort to those whose loved ones have passed, and are now safely

with You.

Give them all little miracles, God. Coat their hearts with tranquility and stillness. Whisper in their ears, words of affection and peace.

Be with the siblings of the girls who were lost. Be with the girls’ grandparents. With the camp staff. Be with the remorseful, the ones who cannot stop blaming themselves.

Be with the girls’ friends from school. With their teachers who loved them so. Be with the family pets, who still wait at front doors, tails wagging, wondering when their favorite girl is going to get back home.

Be with the entire community. Drape yourself over their towns and neighborhoods like a heavy mist.

Be with the rescuers, the first responders, the volunteers. Be with the EMTs, police officers, fire-medics, rescue parties, K-9 unit search teams,…

March, 1783. The Revolutionary War was not over. The throng of Continental soldiers encamped at headquarters was pissed.

And with good reason. The soldiers were bloody. Battered. They were sick. And worst of all, they were unpaid. Namely, because Congress would not get off its fat aspirations and pay its own army.

Just who did Congress think it was? These wealthy jerks, sitting in ornate boardrooms, wearing tight pants and powder wigs, making up new laws, refusing to fund their own army.

The soldiers were angry. Angry at the negligence. Angry at bloated government fatcats whose daughters mail-ordered clothes from Italy, whose sons studied Latin and ceramic pottery.

This was NOT the America the soldiers signed up for. This was B.S.

General Washington’s officers began whispering behind his back. They wrote seething letters in secret.

The soldiers had been circulating petitions suggesting large-scale mutiny. An anonymous letter was read aloud in the bunkhouses, barracks, and tents:

“Any further experiments on our patience may have fatal effects… If this then

be [our] treatment, while the swords [we] wear are necessary for the defence of America, what have [we] to expect from peace...?”

So the men’s minds were made up. They decided on mutiny. Screw this. They were going to abandon the war, let the American people fend for themselves against the British. Then, the army would march on Congress and demand paychecks, with muskets drawn.

Washintgon caught wind that his officers had planned a secret meeting. This was serious. These were HIS officers. HIS trusted guys. And they were plotting against him.

A meeting was called in New Windsor Cantonment, New York. March 15. A nation’s entire future hung in the balance. This is what happened at that meeting:

It was a large hall, entirely made of wood.…

A small-town Walmart. Rural. Lots of rusty trucks and 20-year-old cars. Busy. Tons of people from different walks.

The first thing you pass when you enter the crowded store is the greeter. An older Black woman, sitting on a stool. Blue vest.

Her smile is communicable. There’s something so happy in her eyes. Not fake. A warm, maternal energy.

Remember when you were little, and you’d show up to a church potluck with your mom? And all the church mothers would be there, buzzing around, setting up various casseroles, erecting card tables? All that maternal energy. All those smiles.

Remember how everybody knew everybody else? And everyone there was basically family? Remember what that felt like? Remember how even as a small child, you felt so… I don’t know. So not-alone. You felt so loved.

That’s what her smile somehow does to me.

Whereupon, I walk through this average Wally World, finding that I, too, am now smiling at random people.

There’s the guy at the pharmacy. He’s wearing construction clothes. Big

guy. Covered in grime. Marlboros in his shirt pocket. He’s missing teeth. He’s holding his little boy’s hand. And you can just FEEL how much his son worships him. You can also feel amazing love being exponentially returned by the father.

I smile at them. They both smile back.

In another aisle, a teenage girl, helping her mother. Mom is riding a motorized scooter. Mom has a surplus of tattoos on her bare shoulders and thighs, her head is half shaved, half permed. She doesn’t look that much older than the daughter.

They’re talking about something important, I can tell by body language. The girl is underconfident, struggling with something, and her mother is actively encouraging her child. I sense a deep, profoundly deep everlasting affection between…