Sometimes I question whether this is the place I’m supposed to be. I question whether I’m doing what I ought to be. This Merton quote puts some of that in perspective. I too like to listen to the wind and to live in as much silence as possible.
Everything about this hermitage simply fills me with joy. There are lots of things that could have been far more perfect one way or the other-aesthetically or “domestically”. But this is the place God has given me after so much prayer and longing-but without my deserving it. It is a delight. I can imagine no other joy on earth than to have such a place and to be at peace in it, to live in silence, to think and write, to listen to the wind and to all the voices of the wood, to live in the shadow of the big cedar cross, to prepare for my death and my exodus to the heavenly country, to love my brothers and all people, to pray for the world and for peace and good sense among men. So it is “my place” in the scheme of things. That is sufficient!
Thomas Merton. Dancing in the Water of Life. Robert E. Daggy, editor. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997: 209.