Day 135f: A near-sighting of Serendipity … (September 11, 2019)
It was already quite dark by the time I exited my snuggly Applebee’s safe-haven, and the beginnings of what would prove to be a significant rainstorm had already begun to tumble down from the shadowed skies, so I simply made my way fluidly across the roadway to the local public library, and napped for a bit under the roof of its rain-sheltered front-porch portico. The storm soon passed thereafter, and I made my way back out onto the road and continued walking along my Way, soon coming to the town of Fairlawn, where I pulled into a Sheetz gas station to get some water and immediately met an ebullient and extremely friendly Takia & Anthony, a lovely couple who had apparently just heard all about “the Peace Walker” from my newfound friends at the Applebee’s back in Radford …
“In solitude we can come to the realization that we are not driven together but brought together. In solitude we come to know our fellow human beings not as partners who can satisfy our deepest needs, but as brothers & sisters with whom we are called to give visibility to God’s all-embracing love. In solitude we discover that community is not a common ideology, but a response to a common call. In solitude we indeed realize that community is not steadily made but continually offered … Only in community with others has each individual the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions; only in the community can our highest impulses to be compassionate and generous and caring and kind be actualized. Only in community, therefore, is the highest expression of our personal freedom possible.” ~ inspired by Henri Nouwen & Karl Marx
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