THE COMPANIONSHIP OF ISOLATION.

How can being isolated from people be sublime? When a person lives among uncaring strangers, being alone becomes a better restorative than merriment. The gospels record how Christ often left his disciples and spent hours communing with his heavenly Father in the wilderness. On occasions, we all need a break from our humdrum circumstances.

In November of 1969, I had an experience that seemed to transcend my mundane world of supervisors and dorm mates. It was as if I stepped into a different dimension or into another world.

This excerpt from Deliverance from Jericho (Six Years in a Blind School) describes how I came to sense something awesome for a brief moment.

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One asset of being a child is the gift of imagination which became very real to me one murky Saturday morning in the fog that Vancouver commonly experienced. I decided it might be fun to venture out onto the lawn below Tyler House.

"You better be careful not to get lost," Michael cautioned as I put on my coat.

"I won't," I assured him, "I can always just keep going until I come to a fence".

It was an awesome eerie experience as I walked until all the scenery vanished behind me. At one point, I stood on the lawn with no landmarks visible. All I could see in every direction was a twenty-foot circle of grass and the light grey fog. It was as if I was in my own little world. I imagined how wonderful it would be to have a planet all to myself where; no one would dominate or bother me. For a second however, a chill of fear went through me. I became unsure where I was in relation to the dorm. Then I remembered that I could walk to the top of the hill and find the dorm eventually.

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Deliverance from Jericho is filled with many more vignettes of what life was like in that government-run institution. These range from poignant experiences of homesickness to hilarious incidents of mischief. Read more about Deliverance from Jericho here. Please feel free to contact me directly as well.