A confession and a warning: I no longer live in solidarity with the global neediest. For years I have been, in my soul, and to a large degree in material reality. I realized today that in recent weeks........

A confession and a warning: I no longer live in solidarity with the global neediest. For years I have been, in my soul, and to a large degree in material reality. I realized today that in recent weeks that has stopped being true for me spiritually, and to a degree in material reality. What caused me to be alert to this realization is the psychic pain that I have been in for the last week. I have felt depressed and adrift. Without bearings, without points of reference. Deliberately living each breath in solidarity with my neediest sisters and brothers has been my point of reference, my mooring, my bearings for years now. Feelings of guilt are in no way associated with this, nowhere in me. I'm doing the best I know from moment to moment. Because I walk my path alone, not in community, what I do is a metal high-wire act although it is one that generally I am unconsciously competent at and unaware of the extreme difficulty of staying on The Wire. Recent external opportunities and factors have caused me to lose my focus and fall off the wire. The pain of that has gotten my attention and caused me to wake up. Can I get back on The Wire? I hope so. We'll see. This was my third long trip on the free Palestine vehicle. This was my third and fourth long trip on the elf, the third going up last Thursday a week ago and the 4th coming back the last two days. Going up and coming back for the first time I stayed in the lowest cost possible Motel. The other times to conserve what limited dollars I have for donations to the global neediest I stayed in Walmart or Home Depot parking lots. I was aware of this new Choice, unsettled about it, but I went with it. In no way at the time did I understand it as a manifestation of having left full saladarity lived with the neediest. Again, guilt plays no role in this for me. Greed for total peace of heart, meaning, sense of moral clarity, Joy, is what I'm concerned with. The Quest for comfort crowded out these Within Me. Will be interesting to see what happens now. James