Day 116a: Time to abandon Loneliness …(August 23, 2019)
I stopped into the Wilmington (Delaware) main library on my way out of town this morning and was immediately able to powerfully witness The Walk to fellow visitor Norris and front desk attendant Mary Anne (who turned out to be a fellow Camino pilgrim), and yet Renee in the library’s media center (where I was intending to send out my Walk’s next missive to the world) was equally unimpressed with my endeavor and quite sternly turned me away. I wasn’t at all upset about the same, however, and simply shrugged my shoulders and headed back out onto The Road – stopping briefly on the near outskirts of town to enjoy a delicious cucumber/lime water offered by delightful Julia in the Loma Coffee coffee shop …
“I think it is interesting that evolution designed people (any herd mammals, really) to feel drawn to other people. We see those advertisements with the rugged cowboys riding around alone on a horse or the adventurous backpackers trekking through the solitary wilderness, and we think that is the definition of strength and bravery. Of course, in reality these activities (and others like them) are like setting your Soul down on a couch and not exercising it all. For the Soul needs to interact with other beings to be engaged and enlivened and empowered. The Soul needs to regularly reach out with bold acts of caring to be in any way viable at all. For these are the deeds that require real Courage – and these are our moments of real Strength … We have all known the long loneliness and we have all learned that the only solution thereto is Love – the Love that comes from Kindness, the Love that comes from Caring, the Love that comes with Community.” ~ inspired by Donald Miller & Dorothy Day
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