I’ve been on the road for four days and four nights. Each day has found me somewhere between Western New York and Southwestern Georgia. Each night I’ve retired in a different motel. I’ve seen some lovely sights. Lots of beautiful spring flowers. I’ve seen lovely azaleas, rhododendrons, dogwoods, apple blossoms, and flowers I can’t even name. I’ve seen hundreds of people, thousands of cars and trucks as I’ve motored on over two thousand miles of roads. I’ve been to Allbany, GA; Plains, GA; Clemson, SC and tonight I’m in Winchester, VA. Tomorrow I plan to visit Holy Cross Abbey.
Thomas Merton
Counting the cost
Today marked the 4,000th American soldier killed in combat in Iraq. Colonel Dan Smith has a well written piece at Quakers Colonel. I also read a well written piece my Michael Moore at CommonDreams. It is more than a sad story. It is the tragic death of the American Democracy. We’re taxed to death to … Read more
We do not live for ourselves
I’ve often heard this especially from Fr. Dan Riley at Mt. Irenaeus, but today this gentle reminder came in the mail from the Merton Institute. To live for oneself alone is to die. We grow and flourish in our own lives in so far as we live for others and through others. What we ourselves … Read more
In all things..
We must in all things seek God. But we do not seek Him the way we seek a lost object, a “thing.” He is present to us in our heart, in our personal subjectivity, and to seek Him is to recognize this fact. Yet we cannot be aware of it as a reality unless He … Read more
True Sanctity
True sanctity does not consist in trying to live without creatures. It consists in using the goods of life in order to do the will of God. It consists in using God’s creation in such a way that everything we touch and see and use and love gives new glory to God. To be a … Read more
I’m going to listen
What is Lent? Today I got up at 5:30 am and headed for the gym. It was raining hard. As I ran I could hear the rain beating on the roof of the gymnasium and I was reminded of Thomas Merton who said, It will talk as long as it wants, this rain. As long … Read more
An expanding universe
Thomas Merton gives voice to a recurring thought of my own and that is the Word in a world where we understand more than when the words were first recorded. I must get to know something of modern physics. Even though I am a monk, that is no reason for living in a Newtonian universe … Read more
True Solitude
I will give you what you desire. I will lead you into solitude…Everything that touches you shall burn you, and you will draw your hand in pain, until you have withdrawn yourself from all things…Do not ask when it will be or where it will be or how it will be: On a mountain or … Read more
Conjectures of Thomas Merton
In looking for another famous quote from Thomas Merton’s, Seven Storey Mountain, I happened upon a quote from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander which is just a powerful and insightful given the current political and cultural climate. For myself, I am more and more convinced that my job is to clarify something of the tradition … Read more
The new man
For the “new man” everything is new. Even the old is transfigured in the Holy Spirit and is always new. There is nothing to cling to, there is nothing to be hoped for in what is already past-it is nothing. The new man is he who can find reality where it cannot be seen by … Read more