Over the weekend I finished up the second draft of my second, very short book, working title: God Is. Now What? One of my main points is that we cannot use religion or spiritual practice to hide from reality; in other words, we have to live in the real world, exactly as it really is and learn to handle all the ambivalence, indecision that reality produces inside us–not to mention anxiety, confusion and down-right fear. Faith, in other words, is not about us feeling comfortable–it’s about us doing what we can that’s actually helpful.

Back to my foxes. Molly’s comment about their looking thin really struck home. Much as I love seeing them out my window, I also wish they weren’t there, trapped in this little dot of woods in the middle of this city. I wish I could get Mr. Scotty to beam those foxes out to the woods and fields around my house, where I’d never see them, but I know they’d be okay. But Mr. Scotty, unfortunately lives on TV instead of in the real world, and those wonderful, magical foxes are stuck in the city. And,comfortable with it or not, I seem to be the closest thing they have to a keeper.

So, that’s the reality I have to face–uncomfortable as it is. The question for me to consider is: What’s the most helpful thing I can do for those foxes, given their situation?

The scrub outside my window is also overrun with birds, squirrels and bunnies–about whose presence I’m completely un-ambivalent, and whom I feed without any worry at all. With the foxes, however, I’m stuck between worrying that they’ll starve and worrying that they’ll become to acclimated to human contact. So what I’ve decided to do is buy squirrel food–which has cracked corn and peanuts in it, both of which seem to be part of foxes natural diet. It’s the best way I can think of to handle the uncomfortable reality of my marooned–and wonderful–foxes.

When I was drinking and using, I always went for the quick fix that made me feel better. Sobriety–and a life lived in partnership with H.P.–is tougher sometimes, but that’s okay with me. You see, I like living in the real world–even though it makes me have to have all these difficult feelings about things such as marooned foxes.

If anyone has any other suggestions, I’d love to hear them.