A Commute in Morning Psalms

Ustick Road, Boise, September 17, 2025

Book of Light The sun strikes Ustick Road and it blazes and blinds like a burning bush. The windshield is my altar, and my eyes are an offering to the road. My speed is constant. Everything passes like a lugubrious parade. Light forces the body awake, but the soul is reluctant to respond. Rise, the day commands, and be undone by clarity.

Book of Numbers

Awakening to the day, I read involved texts of two friends at dawn. Is it Psalms 12:19 or 12:19 a.m. when she said she starting praying? Numbers reverberate like dark clock towers with active shooters: 3...4…7…12…15...23…25…76...308...

Numbers march across my mind like a procession of Carmelite nuns being led to a revolutionary Guillotine. I count them, lose count, and count again.

I lose count; I’m tired of counting.

The Commodo bassline of “Deft 1s” keeps time this morning, but for what reckoning?

Book of Violence

Another friend shared a video of another opinion of how legacy media is the souce of all of our gun violence problems. I was staunchly anti-gun once and cried about things like this. I grieved for days after Newtown. Left torn apart and heartbroken, I vowed to never grieve again for something so senseless and random and final. I will not be undone by sorrow.

Drums pound out the headlines of my mind. Are you awake?

Outrage keeps its own metronome.

Each beat a division, a fracture, a camp to find retreat in, and settle myself with like-minded people.

The snare snaps. The bass retreats. Why must I choose a side? I sense I am always being forced to choose a side.

Book of Words

Smattering—a friend insists it isn’t word, but I know it is. But what to make of her smather? What’s the smather, young ones?

The dictionary agrees, when I crack it open in my mind like a hymnal.

Let us sing.

The day begins with fragments.

Some words are true. Other words are worthless. What are my own words worth?

The Dark Night of the Soul

St. John of the Cross whispers a desolate subtext through the subwoofers.

Silence hides in sound. The bassline is black water. I confront the darkness. Have I lost my way, or is this purification so severe it masquerades as abandonment. My soul is stripped of its consolations. Emotions are parched indifference. The will falters. The ego crumbles into dust. Certainties fall away like scaffolding buckling in a windstorm.

Even prayer sounds like static until it doesn’t.

Then, a single note holds.

Book of Common Ground

Beneath gunfire and headlines, a faint harmony waits.

The human heart keeps its beat regardless.

Scripture was music first. Heroic songs.

Maybe the road itself is a psalm unfolding.

Measure by measure, I ride courageously into the resolute light.

Doxology of the Fifteenth Day

Eleven mornings now the road has carried me. Two weeks of sun and sometimes basslines and blinking crosswalk lights, and a dismal parade.

Work waits like a shore beyond the blinding light.

Numbers soften; headlines fade. The gunfire still echoes in the distance, yet my l heart keeps its own quiet time.

Commodo plays on.

The day bends open like scripture.

Bless the light that blinds, the road that lengthens, the melody that lurks beneath the noise.

Fifteen days, and still the work begins anew.

Glory to the rhythm that carries us forward.

Amen.