diff --git a/writing/sawtooth/limerent-object/53.md b/writing/sawtooth/limerent-object/53.md index 6e808cb1..6288e746 100644 --- a/writing/sawtooth/limerent-object/53.md +++ b/writing/sawtooth/limerent-object/53.md @@ -14,7 +14,20 @@ It turns out that the house I'm staying in isn't far from a patch of wilderness. It wasn't quite close enough to walk, but at least there's ride shares. -It's strange how easily I fell back into old habits. Per haps it was the writing I did last night, or perhaps it's the need to get away that drove me up into the hills, out on a walk, out to blister my feet and talk with God. +It's strange how easily I fell back into old habits. Per haps it was the writing I did last night, or perhaps it's the need to get away that drove me up into the hills, out on a walk, out to blister my feet and talk with God. It didn't seem to matter how unfamiliar the trail was. I just started walking through that scrub and brush, through all that brown and all that air, and not five minutes in did I feel my mind empty, as always it seemed to. The scrub around me, buffalo grass and sage and yarrow and bitter cherry, gained depth and clarity, stalks and crenelations arching up to me, up to God, assuming that is where the heavens live. The colors called out to me. The scents stung my nose, even the five-and-some feet up from my point of view. Bitter, aspirinic whiffs of yarrow. Stale shortcake grasses. Ungreen, but not unalive. The taste of dust lingering on my tongue, not enough to be gritty but enough to remind me that the earth was the earth and that I was separate from that. The air, the air itself pushed its way nosily through my fur, a breeze from the west, toppling down off the hills. The air and the hard-packed dirt of the trail beneath my feet knocking vibrations up through my shins. Soft padding, soft crunching, soft rustling; wind in fur, air wandering between tussocks; breathing slowing, calming. Rhythms on the scale of footsteps to seasons. +Even writing this, even sitting on a fence rail at the trail head, I can feel it still. +And through it all, the Lord. Through each and every step, dancing along every brittle stem and blade of grass, surrounding every grain of dust in a blanket of the utmost attention. His voice traveled along the breeze, His breath was the bitter yarrow and shortcake grass. And all of it I could feel and all of it I could hear and all of it washed over and through me and I bathed in it. "His light like wine", I wrote yesterday, and that wine filled me today, and I can still taste it. +There are no conclusions from God. There are no intercessions that I, a servant, could possibly ask of him. What would He do? Would He tell me what to say to Kay? All He has for me is grace and forgiveness. There is so much more than any other individual could ever offer me. + +All the same, I listened for hope, for guidance, for the discernment than hasn't left me since I left St John's. + +To ask that grace, that breath, that light like wine what it is to do is the wrong question. To ask from Him the worldly answers is to misunderstand the scope of things. + +To say that He has no plan for me, no path, however, isn't correct either. He does, and that's why I talk with Him. It's perhaps less than Catholic of me, or at least of a more mystical bent than ought to be expected of me. I'm no Beghard, no Eckhart. + +All I know is that words fail me, and that sometimes the Ground does not. + +I don't know if that path leads toward Kay. I just can't see that far ahead on it. I don't know if it leads me any further into the Church. That's around some corner I can't comprehend. I don't know anything, it seems, but I needed this. I needed time with myself. I needed this walking conversation, this inside-out hesychasm. I needed out of Boise and away from Kay, away from the scent of her, away from the way she presses against my chest from the inside. I need diff --git a/writing/sawtooth/limerent-object/index.md b/writing/sawtooth/limerent-object/index.md index 25b20e59..ab061ed3 100644 --- a/writing/sawtooth/limerent-object/index.md +++ b/writing/sawtooth/limerent-object/index.md @@ -77,7 +77,7 @@ Epigraph: εκαρδίωσας ημάς ενί από οφθαλμών σου ε * [o] [70](70)? --- talk with jeremy * [ ] B: Reaffirm left, even if faith = very important 6. [.] [Bone town](beats/06-bone-town) - * [.] A: Visit, finally acknowledge feelings may be real + * [.] A: Visit, finally acknowledge feelings may be real (okay but are they actually gonna bone) 7. [.] Seeds of doubt * [ ] [Wallow #1](beats/07-seeds-of-doubt--1-wallow-1) - I knew better when... * [ ] A: [Weird concert/dinner, KT's feast day](wallow-1-concert-feast) diff --git a/writing/sawtooth/limerent-object/lo-discernment-2.md b/writing/sawtooth/limerent-object/lo-discernment-2.md index e7cc33e6..784e7a5f 100644 --- a/writing/sawtooth/limerent-object/lo-discernment-2.md +++ b/writing/sawtooth/limerent-object/lo-discernment-2.md @@ -1,3 +1,5 @@ +I know that I stopped writing of a sudden yesterday. I ran out of words, and didn't know what it was that I needed to say that I needed. I just sat for a while, closed my notebook, grabbed another ride back to town, and sat at that coffee shop I visited a few days ago, drinking an ice tea and looking at nothing. I'll meet up with Kay tonight, I'm sure. + I wrote before about certain embarrassing things sticking in the mind of the one embarrassed. We Catholics, we are so good at that. We're so good at picking the embarrassing things and hanging them up on the wall, admiring them, and then inviting others to share in the embarrassment with us. Our confessors are the witnesses to our shame. All we can hope is that they provide relief, and yet perhaps that is why so many confessions stick within the mind. "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been one week since my last confession, and I accuse myself...I accuse..."