Unto the High Places

I have pondered the contemplative life, wondering how it could be useful or applicable to one in the twenty-first century. Might it be useful—even in this age of high-speed electronics, of smart phones, and Wikipedia—or should it be consigned to the annals of history to days when life was apparently simpler and quotidian challenges easier to resolve? Reduced to its essentials, the life of a recluse or eremite might, after all, prove to be instructive, freeing, and liberating. It might still be generally relevant.