Found this hand-written scrap from a 2 day solitude retreat in Sumas, Washington and thought it worth including:

I construct strange little compartments, deadlines, points of references, meridians, lines of longitude in myself. I divide myself into manageable pieces, segmenting my identity, my time, my love, all so that I can measure, evaluate, accomplish something. Instead of just sleeping when I’m tired and eating when I’m hungry, I impose other criteria on it.

I wait for certain lines to be crossed: “when finished with THIS, then I will allow myself to do THAT. Or, “Once THAT has occurred, I must complete THIS….”

There is a flow missing in this approach. A connectivity between events and a connectivity between those events and the person. A Connectivity that Jesus had.

Saar Creek Trestle: The leaves I kick from the timbers flutter to the forest floor below. The maple seeds propeller their way down among them creating the appearance of an elaborate dance.

I notice the point at which the leaves remain attached to the tree, where they“connect” with the branch. As I snap them off, I see the bud of the next year’s leave beneath it. The leaves detach with a satisfying but subtle little *snap*. They were fully connected to the rest of the tree – but when snapped off, you can clearly see the boundary of where the tree ended and the leaf began.

They are connected. Fluid flows both ways through the connection but…

…at some, much smaller level, they are separate; or should I say they BECOME separate in the right season.