The Master Cleanse reduces appropriately, stripping my routine of eating, eliminating the entertainment of food.  The clarity and seriousness it brings always impresses.  Fasting proves efficient in strengthening my prayer life.  Shedding is the process advancing into ordinary time.  An emptiness pervades that is welcomed.  Whereas the knee-jerk advice would be not to isolate, I discern a call to isolate.  I scheduled a session with Dr. Nitcha out of obligation to Highland Springs, while remaining convinced it is unnecessary.  My confidence is proper.  My reading has resumed, storytelling central to the interior gathering within exterior and interior removal.  I watched a Russian movie entitled ‘The Island’, the absorbing story of a bizarre orthodox monk who becomes recognized as a holy man, a babbling man able to pierce souls and heal.  The movie opens with an introduction to his deplorable past.  During World War II, working a coal barge, the man is framed unsympathetically, a coward when a German freighter overtakes his barge.  Boarding, German soldiers find the man hiding, buried beneath the coal.  The man begs for his life, crying, and surrendering pathetically.  The Germans demand to know where his captain is.  The man reveals his captain’s hiding place.  His captain is a proud brave man, scolding him for crying and begging for his life.  When the Germans point a pistol to execute the captain he silently stares them down, calmly lighting a cigarette.  The future holy man crawls upon the ground, weeping, pulling at the German’s legs begging for mercy.  The executing German soldier stares down the strong captain, before turning to his weak comrade, throwing him his pistol.  He tells the man who will be a monk to shoot your captain and we will let you live.  Crying and hysterical, he shoots his captain.  His captain falls into the sea.  The mystery begins within a life that becomes singularly and passionately devoted to God.  A strange email arrived last night.  A discalced Carmelite order in Arizona responded to a vocational inquiry I sent them in October.  Many things coalesce, I strive simply for peace.