I just got sucked into the “Daily Prompt.” I’ve been peripherally aware that the daily writing-prompt was a Thing, having seen blog-posts that responded to it—but I hadn’t really paid attention. My brain is a busy enough place that I don’t generally “go looking” for a prompt.

But I do go for a daily stroll down the lanes of WordPress’s Reader, looking at people’s blogs—and this afternoon the “lane” I chose was a string of people responding to the question, “What is the coolest thing you ever found?” It turned out to be fun, to look through the responses as a group—like a “themed” version of my usual perusing. It turned out to be fun seeing what people remembered, and what they valued.

There were quite a number of responses along the lines of “neat rock,” and some people who found artifacts (an old coin, a 19th-century ink bottle in the garden). Some people found useful things (RayBan sunglasses), and some people found valuable things (ambergris!—and I wasn’t sure she understood how valuable that is, monetarily speaking, so I did leave a note: ounce for ounce, ambergris is far more valuable than gold. If you’re in a country where it can be sold, that is. Look, my whaling-novel-research was USEful today!) Some people named pets. One person named his wife, another lamented a lost boyfriend (“found but couldn’t keep”).

Then we had folks going in for the metaphysical answers. Several found love, one found patience, one found her personality disorder. People expressed gratitude for finding pieces of music, and a recipe, a favorite game. A number of people named books. And there were two poems, a comic-book cartoon, a brief screenplay, and a short story, all responding to the prompt. (And I guess there’s this. A meta-response?) As a stimulus to creativity, I have to say it’s doing its job!

Oh, my answer, since we’re here.

I would have thought this answer seemed a bit cliche, though I actually didn’t see it among the responses I read. I have to go with GOD.

I mean, God wasn’t lost. I always knew about him. I even believed in him. But I didn’t rely on him until I “found” him in the room of the Little Red House, which was my first AA home group. Found him just waiting to take up my burdens once I finally let go my own death-grip on them. It was I who stopped being lost.

Before I showed up there for an A.A. meeting, I’d actually thought the Red House was a biker bar—it usually had a line-up of motorcycles out front. And sure enough, when I walked in, there was a lot of black leather, chains, tattoos, and cigarette smoke. I first arrived on a lunch break from my office, wearing a skirt-suit, and sticking out there like a sore thumb! But of all the different Meetings I went to (and I did sample a lot of them before settling on a home group), it was the Red House that kept drawing me back. It was a place where you might hear “fuck” and “God” in the same sentence, a place where all those “scary” bikers talked earnestly about their relationships with God, a place where I regularly cried and laughed in the same Meeting… It’s where I found God.

And I’ll admit I was pleased with myself, after I learned to ride, the first time I parked my own bike in front of the Red House!