Jonathan Simcoe

Go into the woods to lose sight and memory of the crimes of your contemporaries. —JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

What’s emerging here isn’t just an admission of failure; rather, it’s the problem of getting exactly what you want.

Augustine is our contemporary. He has directly and indirectly shaped the way we understand our pursuits, the call to authenticity.

But now the smartphone serves up infinite ideas: One completed task just spawns another in its place. Players are motivated to do specific things for extrinsic rewards rather than doing whatever they like for the sake of intrinsic pleasure, and knowing it will be valued.

I am bleeding through time and space.

“In your gift we find our rest,” Augustine concludes. “There are you our joy. Our rest is our peace.”

We sleep to time’s hurdy-gurdy; we wake, if we ever wake, to the silence of God. And then, when we wake to the deep shores of time uncreated, then when the dazzling dark breaks over the far slopes of time, then it’s time to toss things, like our reason, and our will; then it’s time to break our necks for home. There are no events but thoughts and

So much work remains. So much evil to fight. So much healing to reach for. So many wounded to love. Consider this your invitation to join in that work. To do what is right, no matter the cost. To hold to the straight line in the midst of the battle. To define your success by faithfulness in the choices you make. The darkness is there, and we cannot

Just back from the lip of this chasm, at the Col’s westernmost edge, the tents of Camp Four squatted on a patch of barren ground surrounded by more than a thousand discarded oxygen canisters.* If there is a more desolate, inhospitable habitation anywhere on the planet, I hope never to see it.