Something has been happening to me, and while I am quite aware of some things, others have caught me unaware. I've compiled mental notes that could fill drawers, and just this week I decided that many of my observations might just be true, and the result of believing them could be rather liberating. I'm reticent to proclaim my broad generalizations, but it's seemed that with these severalfold revelations has come the compounding realization that silence is what has bound me up, and is what often keeps me [and others] down.

Our sweet little ladies book club begins this Monday, and our first short story has been like a fence row hemming in a reality I've just come back to reconsider. I have been distracted, friends, by many things. In this little tale, the author beckons continually to the kernel essence of a man, and his method of enticement is in portraying a door, behind which lies all manner of perfection, contentment, love and bliss. Throughout the story, his true seeing eye darts from clarity to malignancy, and shutters more often betwixt the two. At times he recalls this door with such obscurity that he is unable to discern whether his memory has served to betray of bolster him, and his mind richochets herein for the entirety of our time in the pages. The story is somewhat tragic, and altogether enigmatic, but as I said, its posts have bordered and closed me in in a fantastically unexpected way.

Congruently, I've been in 1 Thessalonians, and while I've skinned my knees on several painful passages, 4:11 has been the canopy atop the shelter I've been missing. It reads: "and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands, just as we have commanded you." I tell you, as this verse has seeped in my soul, so many nagging, unrelenting thorns have been loosed and withdrawn by this healing tonic... To be continued tomorrow...