The blind squirrel.

It's like the difference between the Boston Scrod and my dad, I tell myself. You can take a wide-net approach and drag the entire ocean floor; sooner or later you're going to score at least one gold dubloon. But try and put my mind around it, I just don't see the thrill or even the pride in that. JD told me about strategies that were so much smoke and mirrors and how it doesn't take a lot of ingenuity.

So this is what I do, part of my car check when I climb in and caress the shotgun's barrel is to offer up my inadequacies to St. Michael and hope that still, he'll find me worthy. Guide my actions, make my footsteps your footsteps, illuminate my night and show me where I'm needed most. Every now and then whisper to me the reason I was called, and don't let the cynicism of the weak-hearted wreck my perspective. Remind me that I am a shepherd for you. Remind me that in my heart lives a lion who serves only to protect the weak, old, infirm, and naive. Help me to do your work on earth, as you do in Heaven.

If I was a lesser person I would save the message he left for me and play it back at briefing, on speaker, at shift change, for all to hear. Let him explain why he would keep it up, even in the midst of his Internal. I would replay the opening over and over and over, to drive home his lonliness, insecurity, isolation.

Like a cast statue, hollow on the inside.

But I understand that I'm a sheepdog and what my role is. So instead I ignore it. It burns the flesh for a minute or two but in the end is another rivet in the armor. St. Michael has to test his army every now and then lest we become complacent. The lack of a response is a much more thorough upset than any words could be, anyway.