The readings today are all particularly difficult.

…Nor must you bear a grudge against the children of your people.

(Leviticus 19:1-2, 17-18)

I seem to do that all the time.

And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.’ (Matt 5:38-48)

I am about as far away from that as anybody.

During this week, the sun did not appear at all except on Thursday. It was going to be a hard week.

To cap it all, I woke up in the middle of the night with an absolutely certain feeling that there is no God and that the assertion there was amounted to pleasant, moralising, claptrap. The feeling passed, but it had been there.

In Monday’s reading, the disciples ask Jesus why they could not cast out somebody’s demons. Jesus replies:

This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.

(Mark 9:14-29)

All I could do to confront this feeling was to pray and fall asleep.