Heatmoon on Writing

"A year earlier, I gave consideration to making the voyage alone in a motorboat, because, for a journeying writer, companions human or otherwise are distractions...Isolation is more than a boone to a writer's efforts - it's a near necessity.  However - however - the greater enemy of long-distance solo travel is...desolation."  

- William Least-Heatmoon, River Horse

Facing Primordial Fear

If a tree creeks and cracks in a deep, dark forest and thinks no one is there to hear, it does make a sound.  I discovered this on the trail somewhere between Bristol Springs and Naples, NY.  It was already starting to get dark as my husband and I finally found a place to make camp.  After taking a wrong turn that led us  more than a mile in the wrong direction, we were backtracking - almost back where we had started.  We set down our packs and quickly began gathering firewood and pitching the tent.  It wasn't supposed to rain, so we left the fly off.  "It will be fun to see the forest all around us, stars peaking through leafy branches," we thought.

Cicero on Writing

"For I have often heard that no man can be a good poet...without ardor of imagination and the excitement of something similar to phrensy." 

(A short excerpt from De Oratore)

I want to be blessed.

[CAUTION:  Proceed at your own risk.  This is radical truth.  This is what it means to follow Christ.  These words will chase all that is not of God out of you with its tail between its legs.]

Luke 6:20-26

Looking at his disciples, he said:

[We are Your disciples Lord.]

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

[What more could we ever gain?]

Corporate: united or combined into one body

I was praying this morning, and started thinking about prayer.  I suddenly realized something about prayer that I have not articulated, at least recently:  Prayer is not "talking to God" as I have so often put it to myself and others.  Actually, it is conversing with Him.  Prayer is a conversation, not a speech.  That completely changes things, because a speech is all one-way communication, but a conversation is a flow between parties.  It is even different than speeches alternating back and forth.  There is a continuous give and take in a conversation, and a responsibility to both contribute and listen in order for the conversation to be maintained.  This is prayer.  This new perspective on prayer was revolutionary enough for me this morning as I sat there eating my oatmeal and trying to commune with God, but there is a little more.