Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said,

Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

For whoever wants to save their life will lose it.

But whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.

This is the Word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

You can have a seat.

So Lord, I pray on behalf of all of us that you would take this word and plant it like a seed in our hearts and let it grow

to produce 30 and 60 and a hundred times what was so.

And Jesus name. Amen.

Mary Carr, who is a brilliant American poet and storyteller, opens her memory lit with the letter to her son.

This is an excerpt from that letter.

However long I've been granted sobriety, however many hours I logged in therapist's office and the confessional, I've still managed to hurt you.

And not just with the divorce when you were five with the satin at shouting matches and slam doors.

Just as my mother vanished from my young life into a madhouse, so did I vanish when you were a toddler.

Having spent much of my life trying to plumb her psychic mysteries, I now find myself occupying her chair as plumb me.

Believe me, it's a discomforting sensation.

Mary was the child of a broken marriage who then grew up with an alcoholic single mother and in spite of her best intentions she became an alcoholic single mother in the wake of her own broken marriage.

And what she seems to be acknowledging in this beautiful and vulnerable heart breaking letter is that in spite of our best efforts and intentions, we will all wake up one day to discover that we've become a certain kind of mother,

a certain kind of father, a certain kind of spouse, a certain kind of son or daughter, a brother or sister, a certain kind of friend, a certain kind of coworker, a certain kind of neighbor.

And it will not be our best intentions that choose for us who we become.

It won't be our willpower or our discipline or even our circumstances. It will be your rabbi.

...