Friendship with St. John the Baptist, Hermit

I see a black silhouette of a bird. It's flying, it's alighting on the shoulder of a man, a very rugged man. It's partly a silhouette, partly visible. There must be great, incredible light behind me, and that's why he is in shadow. He has dark skin and hairy....

He says,

"I am here to tell you how to go on before. How to be one who is...who leads and yet suffers greatly. And I feel great warmth for you. And know how you feel and know how it is to go forth, not knowing if what you are saying and doing is that which you are to do, except by faith.

"And that is how I had to be. I had to go out in the desert because I was so different from the others. And it was in the desert, the physical desert, but yes, the desert of my mind, in which I learned how to take 'first steps' as you call them. And there are many first steps that we take. So many that they are no longer first. Beginning is also the end.

"So as we end one experience, we begin another. As we end one life, we begin another...and what I learned, living among the birds and the animals--all the creatures, within the cycles of nature and the circular motion of first steps, as you call them. And it is very important to learn from all creatures, and to study how they begin and how they end and begin again.

"And it is through that that you learn the kind of faith required to proceed, so that it becomes second nature (do you like that pun--'second nature'?) to take first steps, and cyclical steps, metamorphoses, into higher levels. And if you want, you may say, 'the second rung.'"

Today nothing finds it beneficial to re-connect with St. John the Baptist in this helpful encouragement, now, perhaps, more than then. There is a warmth in such friendship beyond the physical desert heat or this day's heat, forcing nothing inside after a morning of some planting and deep root watering Candicans (pictured).

It is good for a soul, even a hermit soul, to finally end some aspects (such as sins!) and experiences in order to take the next step.

Yesterday, when confessing yet another sucker shoot from the main branch of the felled behemoth, sideways cross (talk of people!), nothing commented that due to this great sin it has severed some relationships and caused others to view Holy Mother Church in even more negativity. Nothing accepts it deserves graces to be lost. That thought of lost graces is sad only in that nothing would then not be as utilized by Jesus for the Church, for souls.

But the confessor (not the regular who is gone, also, but temporarily) said that nothing has confessed, has repented, has been forgiven--and reminded nothing of how the father dealt with his prodigal son. He gave him even more gifts in the rejoicing of a changed life, of coming "home" to a new beginning. So the priest told nothing that now there will be yet more graces. Yes, with that behemoth sideways cross in the way, grace was probably very much blocked.

Today it seems a grace came with the lobbing off of one more emotional tie to yet another relationship that was no longer vibrant--but had signs of withered leaves and stems like a spent perennial beyond revivifying. Maybe it never was a healthy, rooted plant. It is all right, though; it is all right. Nothing recalled the message of St. John the Baptist, and here it is written again to ponder, to comprehend: to begin again and proceed.

Not only will nothing proceed, but the others (who have dropped off or have been sent on their way) will proceed as well. We all have to end and begin again as we spiral onward. A hermit does so with few if any mortal attachments other than the God-sent souls, and that only for a time, like the bird perching not long on the recently planted Minaret Cypress or the voles who came but must be sent on their way in a more radical way.

Today nothing again thanks St. John the Baptist for proclaiming to all to behold the Lamb, and that we must decrease and He must increase.