Day Twelve

Psalm 18

I love you, O Lord my strength:
O Lord, my crag, my fortress and my deliverer.

2 My God, the rock to which I come for refuge:
my shield, my mighty saviour, and my high defence.

3 I called to the Lord with loud lamentation:
and I was rescued from my enemies.

4 The waves of death encompassed me:
and the floods of chaos overwhelmed me;

5 The cords of the grave tightened about me:
and the snares of death lay in my path.

6 In my anguish I called to the Lord:
I cried for help to my God.

7 From his temple he heard my voice:
and my cry came even to his ears.

using part of last year's reflection again today. it fits this psalm

From "The True Wilderness" by H.A. Williams
(Library of Anglican Spirituality ed. Susan Howatch) 1994 p29

…Most people's wilderness is inside them, not outside. … Our wilderness, then, is an inner isolation. It's an absence of contact. It's a sense of being alone — boringly alone, or saddeningly alone, or terrifyingly alone. Often we try to relieve it — understandably enough, God knows, — by chatter, or gin, or religion, or sex, or possibly a combination of all four. The trouble is that these purple hearts can work their magic only for a very limited time, leaving us after one short hour or two exactly where we were before.

As I said, our isolation is really us — ……