The air is chill, stirred by a breeze from the west. Jays fly about, silent. Only the wind through the trees, that gentle whoosh, that quiet shake, can be heard. The air is moist, and the smell of the forest drifts, bringing variously the aroma of soil eager for life, cedars and fir.

The spice smell of a candle fills my room, cinnamon wax finding cracks in the candle holder and pouring out onto the desk, aromatic lava.

I pour through volumes long resting in dusty shelves, finding not only research answers, but indeed my soul within. The reasons I spent more time and significantly more money in wandering halls of learning than practical decisions would encourage. I taste of worlds long since gone, echoes of which remain, but different in character and vastly different in appearance. Worlds both over-familiar and strikingly unknown.

This week I begin.

Begin to study the Gospels in depth. Not to impress a PhD, or add more letters after my own name, but instead to seek after the life which brings life, to fill my mind with more than the stories of my youth and through imagination journey back through time and discover what world it was which brought forth the Messiah.

The goal is to then translate this study, making it approachable and interesting.

Whether this becomes a way to pay for my own existence is still a question. That it is a joy beyond measure to my existence is without a doubt. For this kind of study I’ve sacrificed myself, choosing impractical paths, putting off vital stages of a normal life.

Now with encouragement and outside pressure of sorts I feel able to settle into this life with a renewed vigor. The palpable goal is to write, and produce a work worth reading. The immeasurable goal, which encourages my own heart, is to delve once again into the realities of a faith which too often drifts.

It is in this study that my soul resides, and so in delving the depths, I hope to find it once more.