Today’s Prayer to Passage will be from the book “A Course in Miracles” scribed by Helen Schucman.

January’s venture within these Divine writings from “A Course in Miracles” is an intimate accomplishment. And now, we continue…

Today I pray, “Dear God, Tonight I had dinner at the Whole Foods with four of my current good-close friends. That’s what I’ll call them: Good-close friends. Because that’s what they are to me at this time. I met them in a seminar I am currently enrolled in titled (**Ahem**) ‘Sex and Intimacy’. It’s actually a fascinating seminar. I am learning so much about the power of vulnerability and authenticity in relationships with the people around us, and in the sexual relationships we establish. I am learning about hope and despair, payoffs and costs. I am learning continually about integrity and that I am my word and only my word. And that the only real who I am is who I say I am, and willing and honoring to be. And that true intimacy is recognizing the possibility in one another.

So, my good-close friends and I all got together for dinner at the Whole Foods tonight. And it was such a treat to learn more about them. We talked journalism, college basketball, book publishing, military intelligence, learning a foreign language, kundalini yoga, and several other brain-tickling topics. It felt so good just to be out! With friends! I just don’t do that, God, and I really need to, as it was nourishment for my soul to do so this evening. I am learning that even in a seven personal year (in numerology, my personal year this year is a number seven), a year of the hermit, the sabbatical year when I should be naturally drawn to staying home every night and writing my next book, aka this book, I would rather be out with friends.

It was such a fresh delight. Maybe I’m sick of having my partner, boyfriend, lover, significant other as my only real friend. Maybe I want a group of regular friends with whom I meet up on a regular basis. I do! I really want this. My childhood crush is at a distance, and as he only recently moved away five months ago, even he goes out and socializes with new friends in a new town. So how is it that I, now having lived in the Minnesota Twin Cities metro for nearly five years, do not have a regular-set group of friends? What. Is. Up. With. That?!? Well, if anything, tonight was cause for questioning just that.

Thank You for the friends I do have, God, as they are perfect in this moment. And the awesome out-of-the-ordinary seminar I am in leads me to these cool people. I love them dearly. Ever grateful for love. Amen.”

Following my prayer, I held the closed book in my hands and opened it to reveal this passage on page 234:

“This will not tempt me to delay myself.
The world I see holds nothing that I want.”
—A COURSE IN MIRACLES

And here I am, at home, reading and typing the very passage that informs me that my desire to socialize may be canonized here with all of you! This is, indeed, the nature of a blog: social writing. If I were to become tied down by appointments to go out and about and socialize as a common activity, my truest set of desires would delay itself. I enjoy my time in this medium. I enjoy the social aspect of it in this hermit sabbatical year. I know my path, my path is chosen, and I continue to choose it. There is power and freedom in this. The sort of power and freedom I feel in my most thrilling moments of socializing with friends.