Roomin' House Blues

A few days ago I wrote a post that talked about various things I had done, primarily my time as a hermit. I cited a poem translated by J.P. Seaton in his "The Shambhala Anthology of Chinese Poetry, about the life or a hermit.  I found another poem by Shih Te, an 8th Century Chinese Zen monk that begins with "If you want to be happy, there is no way but to be a hermit," and a few lines later concludes, "And me? I ought to be at joyous ease, but I can't help thinking of the people in the world."    I thought about this poem, ironically, after I posted a couple of comments on my nephew Brenly's Facebook post. He commented on how people often feel more lonely after Facebook or social networking.  I wrote, "   Oh also, we always have a moving toward communion with someone and a move away into isolation. It just goes faster with the internet. But the real trick is interior change. To move from loneliness to solitude and from manipulat...

While on Tuesday, Mardi Gras, I went to the first in a Lenten series on the Beatitudes and on Ash Wednesday I went to mass and received ashes, swearing myself then as a penitent, on Friday I began really began my Lent.  Friday I went to mass and then a soup supper.  I stayed at church and went to a Stations of the Cross and a Benediction.  I contemplated the exposed Eucharist for a few minutes and I returned home to do my daily bible study.   As a child in Catholic school on First Fridays and all Fridays during the 40 days of Lent, with my classmates I did the Stations of the Cross.  I complained silently to myself as the hard floor seemed to hurt my knee caps as a genuflected at each station I felt a bit of boredom at the length and repetition of the stations. But many years later, when I returned to Seattle and visited the church I did the stations in, I felt disappointed that the hard aisle...