(entry from day two at the Hermitage)
Today I began with morning prayers from the Anabaptist Prayer book. The Hermitage has a corporate time of morning prayers, but I decided to do my own for now. I went to breakfast and then hiked to the stone chapel. It is a lovely, little building. I went inside and read from Thomas Merton's "Life and Holiness" which I checked out of the Hermitage library.
From there, I hike to the Lean Too. I sat there and read some more from the Thomas Merton book and spent some time in silent reflection before continuing my hike.
Next I came to one of the primitive cabins where people who really want to be completely alone can stay for a while. There are three of these. The do not have electricity or running water. There is an outhouse behind. You can hike back to St. Joseph's barn if you want a shower.
Then I had a good experience walking the prayer labyrinth. I find this to be a very helpful prayer exercise for me because I pray better and stay more focused when I am moving. In fact, there are times when I will leave my office and walk circles around the sanctuary while I pray about something. Unlike a maze, prayer labyrinths only have one way in and the same way back out. When you reach the center, people often spend time "dwelling with God" before exiting. Often times, I take the baptism class participants over to Kirkmont Retreat Center to use their prayer labyrinth. It is only about 10 minutes away.
When I got back to St. Joseph's Barn, Jonathan and Anastasia were sitting on a swing and talking. I joined them to chat for about an hour before lunch. We had a nice time catching up and reflecting on the past few years. These are the type of friends that even when you are apart for long time, you can pick right back up again where you left off.
Lunch, as always, was in silence. The exception was that before each meal, our host would introduce the food and end with the statement that "Food is God's love made edible." After lunch, my friends headed for home and I spent some time reading in my room. After supper, I went on another hike and saw quite a bit of wildlife including a ground hog, deer, and chipmunk. Part of my hike took me to a portion of the property that had been effected by tornado damage. I was unable to continue on my hike in that direction because the damage was so bad. I went around and tried to approach it from the other side but was unable to get very far that way either.
At the end of my hike as evening was beginning to set in, I stopped at a bench at the end of the meadow. As I sat there, I began to pick off briers and seeds that had attached themselves to my jeans as I hiked. As I did so, I felt something crawling up my right leg. When I lifted my jeans, I found a tick crawling up my leg. I reflexively smacked it and brushed it off. I decided that I should check my left leg as well and found that a tick had embedded itself in my left leg. I headed back to my room where I tried ice and hot match heads to remove it. When neither of those methods worked, I used the tweezers on my pocket knife to carefully pull it out being sure to get the head as well. I put it in a ziplock bag and used a permanent marker to mark the spot on my leg. I then changed out of my clothes and checked to be sure that I had not brought any more into the room with me. I found one more on my jeans and later that night, one came crawling across the floor to me. I froze them all and hoped that I was done with them.
Before going to bed, I read some scripture, did my evening prayers, worked on my Bible memory and spent some time drawing. Middle school, high school and the first year of college, I would draw from time to time. Typically, I would draw something that served as an expression of my faith. It is a hobby that I have not spent much time on in recent years. I'm no Leonardo, but it is something for me and it allows me to use a different part of my brain than I typically use in my pastoral work.
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