Reveries of a solitary walker*

I heard somewhere off somebody that walking is a discipline and I thought it was true when I heard it but now I know it is even more true. I have tried to make a habit of walking at night for several reasons:

- it gives me time to think
- the sky at night with all the stars firing their lasers off is spellbinding
- so I don't end up on the Biggest Loser
- it makes me think that perhaps our world isn't as mean and nasty as the news and papers have us believe.
- perhaps I will make a new friend
- I can be an asshole and say things to complete strangers like: "beautiful night(?)" or "evening!"

The whole nightwalking thing also makes me wonder about how much I miss when I am inside. The world seems to sparkle at me when I walk and I don't go very far- maybe thirty or forty minutes- and yet I know that the outdoors is precious and special.

I wonder how someone like John Howard, who walks every morning, can emphasise all those buildings and numbers and business deals over the beauty of sunrise or the way the stars fall into the cracks of darkness. I enjoy the outside world far more than flashy, big television screens but I am a long way away from finding a rhythm to describe what God has done. My prayer is that my rhetoric rests in my heart and that the environment breaks through my ribs and out of my mouth.

If you have read this far: I like you, thankyou very much.

*This title is stolen from the book of the same name by Jean- Jaques Rousseau. Most of my ideas and much of my philosophy is based on his writing so you should check him out.

Community

There must be some point in which every thought you have ever had culminates into some overwhelming force that you can throw at people: this is how I imagine academics and authors: that they would just hurl massive oceans and powers at the general public for them to be hit like a cannonball into a crowd of people: the cannonball then opens up massive avenues in the crowd and the academic/ author strolls down waving and smiling: the people who have been hit with the cannonball all just lay around there wincing and say 'ow': I am one of those wincing at the whole author/ cannonball thing.

But seriously, what do you want? A nice house/ good family/ easy job (heck yes)/ no job? I don't know what I want, I just know it's the same thing that you want. I think I want a community to be a part of: a community that loves people, actually, really loves people and not what people can give them. So many 'communities' only grow out of a mutual need, for example, we all NEED to be real cool: right? right. So the whole idea of a scene (indie, electro, rock n' roll) fills that need but only by me leeching off you and you taking from me. I want a community that says: "I love you because for no good reason and you are really good at this and I will lift you up and put you above my own self even though I am incomplete and really need someone to tell me that I am okay just as much as you, but I love you so it doesn't matter".

I don't think that sort of selflessness can happen without Jesus. He is a pretty good guy like that I think Jesus just loves us for no reason except that he loves us. Maybe someone can disprove this to me but through all I have learned about Jesus and us humans it would seem he really would have no reason to care about us: but he does and he says crazy things that I hope to understand one day.