Date: 2005-04-04
From: Tumbling Run Shelter

To: Scottish Inn Motel - Fayetteville
Miles today: 9.6

On the far side of the valley I watched the drifting mist comb the hair of the trees.Spent the night alone again last night. My headlight has started to act up, turning itself on and off on its own whim, but generally at a particularly bad time, such as the moment I am pouring the boiling water into my coffee cup.   Awoke before dawn to a fingernail sliver of moon, after a night cold enough to resort to my silk underwear. Started out with an ascent of Snowy Mountain to Buzzard Peak in the clear cold windy early morning, looking at the sun shining on the other side of the valley while I toiled upwards in the cold shadows. Soon passed by Chimney Rocks, alack no camera, and continued on a very nice, but very rocky, ridge walk along the crest of Snowy Mountain. Then down to PA233, which leads to South Mountain, containing a building that looks just like the Village Hall at Glen Ellen where my model rocket club used to meet.   Then it was back up again to the ridge of Rocky Mountain. Aptly named, this ridge is a lot rockier than Snowy and has several significant boulder fields that demanded both foot and hand work to get through. Maybe I have met the rocks of PA at last! A bright sunny day but cold and windy. The trail winds along the ridge, among White Pine and Hemlock making it easy to see the beauty in even the most ordinary of things.   Finally a long slow descent to PA30 which leads to Fayetteville. Could not get a signal on my cell, but was able to call he motel on a public phone at the Pizza Place ¢ alack closed on Mondays. The owner of the motel came and got me and drove me to the PO. A tense ten-minute search in the bowels of the PO finally unearthed my drop box and then it was on to the motel.   I have stocked up on goodies to eat on my zero day tomorrow ¢ a round trip hike of three miles to the store. Had a nice shower when the water finally ran hot and eat dinner at the Flamingo Restaurant. So I am all set up for my zero day. Will chat with KT later tonight I hope.   It was strange that once I got to the highway it was almost impossible to continue with my meditative thought process once the traffic started to whiz by. On the trail even though you need to pay attention to your footing and way finding, I find it much easier to think. Perhaps that is why monks and hermits have often retreated to the wilderness ¢ not for self depravation ¢ but to make it easier for them to meditate and to ¢Lubricate their Thoughts¢   Last year I wrote that of the three statements;1. God is Good2. God is all powerful3. Bad things happen- One had to be untrue. I picked #2. Thinking upon it again today I now realize that there is a #4 statement that needs to be added, and taken into account also;4. Man has free will. If God prevented all bad things from happening to man then the existence of God would be overtly manifest in the world. Such miraculous interventions in the physical laws, which otherwise apply to everyone, would mean a divine intervention. In fact in would mean that no harm or bad thing could ever happen to anyone. We would all believe in God.   But we have free will so we have to figure out the existence of God ¢ or not ¢ for ourselves. We cannot be constantly reassured of Gods existence, because that would mean that we would not have the free will to reject the Spirit. So bad things happen because the Spirit allows the natural order of things ¢ tsunamis, cancer, pain, suffering, death ¢ to continue so that we have to rely on our own will and intellect to have faith in the Spirit even when things are bad. Indeed some of the most deep and enlightened of spiritual thinkers have been dragged into the depths of despair because God will not overtly manifest her presence to them. Of course not ¢ she wants us to know her by means of our own free will. So how about that for an explanation?   I think it still needs some work because I think that it also means that a human completely protected by God would certainly be in the presence of God in a state similar to that of the Garden of Eden. Was it not the free will of man that caused the original expulsion from the Garden in the first place?   All of these thoughts came from one of the Screwtape Letters [letter#8] where he talks to Wormwood that the ¢Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His [Gods] scheme forbids Him to use¢ In other words God cannot become overtly manifest in the world because it would remove our free will to find, or reject, him.   By the way to me God=Spirit. I like to think of God as the Spirit because it has less emotional connections for me than the word God. I believe I have already alluded to the female nature of God. Yea, yea, I know, in fact the Spirit is neither male nor female but lets think about It differently and call ¢It¢, ¢Her¢Thought for today-      Sometimes I sits and Thinks,      But mostly I just sits!