Dawdling around here, with distractions. Tired, pained, and feeling the sorrows of the world but no doubt with way too much self involved.
I am to focus on Jesus, and is this a time in which He would look upon Jersusalem and weep?
The Red Cross wants my blood, and I feel tired and lazy to drive out there to donate. For shame! It is St. Pio's birthday annivesary, and he suffered unto blood. Yet I stay here and ponder.
The aspiring hermit has been to Mass, spoke to some friends prior, then made two errands. Must locate another bid or two for a deck, cancelled hiring someone to put in decorative fence since the one carpenter duo are resistant due to the neighbors' issues with the aspiring hermit.
Trouble like that drains me more than having blood let.
More books. I purchased more hardbounds on-line. Found some, also, at H. B. Now must take in some to gain credit, as I spend too much money. In the wee hours I e-mailed a friend with whom I can share my pathetic struggles in this life, and noted that I go spending as a means of distraction and for social contact. Also, and perhaps more so, I browse books and other type distractions as a means to try to forget about the constant physical pain. It is all representative of what it means to try to be STILL.
When lying in bed in stillness, the mind is not still. Then, the body feels the pain and is not still: tosses and turns, gets up, looks out the window, walks a bit from room to room. The mind pleads with God, Mary, Jesus, Holy Spirit, saints and thinks about people needing prayer, asking for prayer, and the mind tries to pray. The mind thinks of the past, of earlier years with no pain and with life seeming fresh and full of opportunities. But the memories stop because the mind tells it to stop. Such memories are counter-productive.
If I have been a failure at all else connected with the world, and in most ways I have failed in the world, will I be a success at the hermit life?
The hermit life requires but two: God and self.
God is perfect and successful and All; self would be the only problem if there is failure.
Today it seems I have no steam but always the thoughts. I tell myself without speaking that I would feel a sense of accomplishment if I "did" something, such as organized a closet. I can say I got some groceries and made a contact for another deck bid. I drove to Mass and was there, participating with Fr. Benedict of Uganda and all the rest who probably struggled to understand, and hopefully who felt great compassion for a priest being sold off for a couple of years to do missionary work in our country. We lack generosity in vocations here.
But is it doing that is so necessary? Some manual labor, yes, but the problem I face in stillness is just being still and learning that it is all right to be still and not do. Stillness can be offered to God as prayer and penance as much as doing.
