Hermits United

11×14″ – pastel on paper

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My musical mentor calls Sunday his “sacred day.”  Though he doesn’t really practice any religion, he is very much aware, after a week of worldly intrusions, of the need for a day of rest from external stimuli.  A day to honour what is important to his spirit.

Since I never expect to hear back from my mentor on a Sunday, I made these cookies for him Saturday instead.  This is an update of the recipe I posted a couple of weeks ago:

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Basically, stir in a small bag of chocolate chips with the quick oats, and this is the resulting cookie.

And may I say, I think it’s an awesome cookie.  My mentor ate about half a dozen off the plate, before I even gave him the dozen I’d promised him.  Okay, I actually didn’t count.  It might have been less.  It might have been more!  He ate well, anyway, and he pronounced them “perfect.”

My mentor is rarely wrong.  He’s never wrong about food, I can tell you that.  🙂  And he is definitely right about the human need to take personal time and space out from the world.

Maybe it’s because we are both hermits (I tend to run with fellow hermits), but we both feel the need keenly for that reflective time in our hermit caves.

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Being a creative person requires living as two people in the world:  extravert and introvert.  Perhaps artists are ambi-verts.

The extravert has to get out in the world and experience life, in order to have something to create about.  Life has to be lived, to the fullest, in order for person to throw that life down passionately on the page, on the canvas, in the song.  The artist requires community in order to find the muse.

But with every cycle of passionate living, the artist must turn introvert again.  The artist must take that time alone:  to reflect, to dream, to create.

Artists are basically hermits with friends.

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I spent yesterday hermiting, myself.  I am off now for a bike ride and some extraverted potlucking with my fellow hermit friends.

Happy creating!

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Dodie Goldney

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related posts by Dodie Goldney:

Soul Sustenance

Refraction and Reflection

Convergence and Community

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