Undercurrents

If there is a more freeing way to write of oneself, I cannot think of it for the moment. I've found that I get in trouble with the blog because it's very nature encourages reflection upon one's self and not onto others at all; very much in-line with the thought of 'the world' and so very out of touch with the selflessness God encourages us to develop. Perhaps even further from God will be the eventual desire to write and live in dreams.

Fantasy and imagination are encouraged by St. Ignatius as finding one's direction for life, yet at the same time this very same man wrote the Spiritual Exercises, persisting that emotions and notions have to taken out of discernment for the Spirit to be found and rightly acted upon. How can this be?

I am hounded by spiritual attacks, they alleviate, and then new ideas come into my mind. Prayer to God and Saints comes to me unbidden, and these themes are so very far removed from what I typically associate with a vocation. Confusion would ensue, if I did not staunch the flow with day dreams, fantasy, and desires. These dreams and desires are not of fleshly lust, but of travels and experiences, history and the future, and frills and hardship.

There is a perfect quote from James A. Michener's Alaska which fits perfectly here.

Better hunting, an addiction to adventure, a dissatifaction with oppressive old
ways, motives like these were the timeless urges which encouraged men and women
to spread out even in peaceful times, and it was in obedience to them that these
early men and women began to settle the Americas, both North and South, without
being aware that they were doing so. (p. 57)

Yet, it is not just actual, firm land under my feet that calls to me, but that too of the past, of past peoples and periods not experienced, not known that tug at me once again.

Dangers don't deter me, warnings have yet to phase me, people who understand, I've come across few.