The radical step is to let ourselves alone.
David Whyte
A person I think needs to get a little bit drunk to be here a full week. I am not short changing silence and solitude by any means, in suggesting this. But after two days of no real, or rather habituated contact with the world, I opened a beer.
Not just any beer; a New Holland Dragon’s Milk 11% ABV barrel aged stout. I’d written the morning away, attended three Calls to Prayer, consumed the much appreciated oatmeal at breakfast, then barley soup for lunch, and after a walk (amazing, gorgeous, splendidly serene) to St Edmond’s Lake, I popped the top.
A few sips in it felt as if the top of my head were opening. A lifting, or lightening of pressure was being released.
Ah; the tools of release are different for everyone; I would not suggest to my ex, say, that he try a beer to experience this glorious sensation for he, recovered and remaining, has been sober for four years.
I’d forced myself to partake in the rhythmic offering of this place today. I thought it was a necessitated output of my conviction to be here.
Sipping the beer, watching the wind blow through the trees out the window with the late sun tinting my view, I recalled my personal reason for being here; to write. So how, pray tell, was stepping eight times a day from my sequestered solitude, serving this end?
It was not. It was proving a disturbance; distraction at best. The devil in my head pulled a punch with this one, coming at it sideways, trying to trick me into distraction. It is good after all, to attend liturgy of the hours, right?
Yes it is for those who are here for it; or the monks, fo course. But for me? Not so much.
So I remove the force I put on myself that took me from the desk through the doorway and into the balcony; realign my sights. I am here to write first. When my behind becomes numb and my mind slows down the words, then, if a bell tolls, I go.
Or, I may not.
Amen.