A small cave and a big personality

Yes. This is what being in a small apartment in a strange city will do to a man. I stood arms length from the mirror and took a small fine point sharpie and began to trace the homley visage. Why is he saying that? I think he is satisfied with having cleaned the whole house and made an awesome dinner...for himself.

It was just yesterday when I was prancing through glades of aspen and pine, knee deep in slush when I imagined becoming a hermit. Some one who knows me might roll thier eyes, or, if they are the more stern type, might remind me I am married and need to think like a responsible married man. I know. I am speaking more to the idea of hermitude, not to the possibility of becoming one. I once wanted to be a monk; or some deep woods recluse like Thoreau; a witty anti-contemporary who had his stack of theological and philosophical books amassing knowledge.

The wind hushed through the bare branches above me. I stood soaking in the sun. Nearby an old cabin up to its gutters in snow sat, lonely, cold, uninhabitted waiting the summer when the owners would occupy it. I imagined my self in it, what it would be like to live there the majority of my life. Joy undulated into a somber silence.

I resloved then, that I am glad to not be a hermit. So much about the life that the kid from Into the Wild lived is appealing to me, though. Then I remember his revelation: Love. To live is to love. This cant be done running from society and all its misconceptions on how to live, eat, dress. I want to shed that off like a useless garment; even the majority of religious ideology. There's always some theological talking head with a new emergent view on how to be a Follower of Christ. I am simply cloyed with information. I want nonsense. I want to join the wild and forget that this world and its people exist. Yet, those words come back to me: to live is to love.

As for hermitude and knowledge? What good is knowledge, said Paul, if its for your self? It only puffs up. But love, oh true love like Christ showed, builds up. This is truly eternal worth: To invest in another what God has put in. For me to become a cloister, it would be like that farmer whom Christ speaks of in the parable, who loaded his barn full and sat contented, only to be asked of his life that same night. What do I actually live for? was the undertone of my thoughts high in the Rockies. Is it really for my own satisfaction in life? What about my wife? This is the greatest opportunity to love a man can have this side of heaven! How selfish my thinking has been! How empty it would be to jettison all those in your life, and society, for the sake of some peace of mind and wanton pleasure. If Christ had not resurected and given me a living hope, then yes, I could rationalize hermitude. But he did, resulting in a living hope for an eternity full of the greatest, sweetest pleasures one could possibly conjure up. So, the final question I ask is this: What am I really living for and how will I make the action oriented choices to reflect that? I bought a beer; I figure I will start there for tonight.

Cheers!