TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

We’re surrounded by advice. Social media is full of it: clips telling whoever will listen how to do any number of things. Hacks for styling an outfit, parenting tips, strategies to improve mobility, tricks for meal prep, ways to save money, help with mental health issues. And, of course, things that we “should” buy, alongside ideas that we “should” buy into.

And then there are more classic sources of advice, like newspaper columns and phone calls with parents or other relatives. There are government guidelines and public health orders. And religion, too, helps many people find guidance.

It makes me think of the classic piece of advice, in the form of a question: What would Jesus do? You could never actually know the answer to that question. It asks you to find your own certainty, to find what you believe. In a world where people are giving advice left and right, I see more and more people struggling with uncertainty. Right now, I hear so many stories of people having a hard time holding onto sureness. And, of course, I see a lot of advice on how to sit with uncertainty.

I’m someone who has more curiosity than certainty about spiritual matters. I don’t know anything for sure—I have a restless spirit—but I’m grateful to poets and poetry who make me feel like my questions are worth asking.

There are so many things to be curious about, right in front of us. Poetry, instead of asking questions like How did I get here? or What should I do? often deals more with the senses. Questions like What did it look like? How does it sound, taste, feel? Questions that ask us to witness. Much of the advice we receive assumes we have a level of control. But life doesn’t always work like that. We’re so often rolling with the punches, trying to hold our sorrows, or, to wring out a little pleasure and joy along the way.

Today’s poem is a generous offering. Through giving more questions than answers, it finds communion in surprising places.

At the End of a Good Week, the Van Broke Down
by Mary Ardery

The closest building was a church’s
                    youth ministry annex. The pastor

invited us inside to wait, said
                    to help ourselves to the bathroom,

the pinball machine, the pop cans in the fridge,
                    then left to run errands.

All that week, backpacking in the Pisgah,
                    we’d been exploring notions of a Higher Power.

None of us seemed to know exactly what
                    we believed, and we joked it was a sign

from God, the car trouble, how it led us here
                    to lounge in beanbag chairs. The women

giddy from pop they hadn’t tasted for months 
                    in rehab. Because I was in charge,

I suggested maybe one per person
                    but most were already chugging 

their second can of Mountain Dew
                    and who was I to refuse them?

I’d had no easy answers about God
                    so I’d offered Rilke:

Live the questions.  Maybe 
                    that was enough for me, too.

Though when the pastor returned 
                    with enough Taco Bell for all of us—

quesadillas, burritos, Crunchwrap Supremes—
                    everyone was a convert.

“At the End of a Good Week, the Van Broke Down” by Mary Ardery from LEVEL WATCH © 2025 Mary Ardery. Used by permission of June Road Press.