From For The Time Being by Annie Dillard
Thomas Merton
to be genuinely free and alone
The conviction that I have not even begun to write, to think, to pray, and to live, and that only now am I getting down to waking up. And that, by God’s grace, this comes from finally trying, with great difficulty, to be genuinely free and alone, as humbly as I can, in God’s sight, without passively accepting all the standards and the formulas which have been adopted by others – or, at least, that I am now exercising a wider choice in my sources of inspiration. – Thomas Merton, journal entry, June 22, 1958
The real home
I sit in the cool back room, where words cease to resound, where all mornings are absorbed in the consonantia of heat, fragrant pine, quiet wind, birdsong, and one central tonic note that is unheard and unuttered. Not the meditation of books, or of pieties, or of systematic trifles. In the silence of the afternoon all is present and all is inscrutable. One central tonic note to which every other sound ascends or descends, to which every other meaning aspires, in order to find its true fulfillment. To ask when the note will sound is to lose the afternoon: it has sounded, and all things now hum with the resonance of its sounding. – Thomas Merton, journal entry, May 1965
The country that is nowhere is the real home. – journal entry, May 30, 1968
Wake up and be vigilant
“The Lord has plucked up proud men by their roots, and planted the lowly peoples.” “He has put down the mighty.”
If I were more attentive to the word of God I would be much less troubled and disturbed by events of our time: not that I would be indifferent or passive, but I could gain strength of union with the deepest currents of history, the sacred currents, which run opposite to those on the surface a great deal of the time!
“Do not quarrel about a matter that does not concern you; and when sinners judge, do not sit in council with them.” (Ecclesiastes).
This especially strikes me: “Be wary, take very great care, because you are walking with your own downfall; when you hear such things, wake up and be vigilant.” It seems to me that at the moment I very much need this kind of “attention” and “listening,” for I have come to the most serious moments of my life.
– Thomas Merton, journal entry, May 11, 1965
Hang on to the clear light!
Photo by Rahul on Pexels.com
Not that I must undertake a special project of self-transformation or that I must “work on myself.” In that regard, it would be better to forget it. Just go for walks, live in peace, let change come quietly and invisibly on the inside.
But I do have a past to break, with an accumulation of inertia, waste, wrong, foolishness, rot, junk, a great need of clarification, of mindfulness, or rather of no mind – a return to genuine practice, right effort, need to push on to the great doubt. Need for the spirit.
Hang on to the clear light!
– Thomas Merton, Journal entry, May 30, 1968
The vanity of our best efforts
From Tertullian: Malim nullum bonum quam vanum. “I would rather have nothing than have vanity.”
When we face the vanity of our best efforts, their triviality, their involvement in illusion, we become desperate. And then we are tempted to do anything as long as it seems to be good. We may abandon a better good with which we have become disillusioned and embrace a lesser good with a frenzy that prevents us from seeing the greater illusion.
So, through effort that may seem to be wasted, we must patiently go towards a good that is to be given to the patient and the disillusioned.
– Thomas Merton, Journal entry, May 29/30. 1962
the bickering of mice
It is necessary for me to see the first point of light that begins to be dawn. It is necessary to be present alone at the resurrection of Day in solemn silence at which the sun appears, for at this moment all the affairs of cities, of governments, of war departments, are seen to be the bickering of mice. I receive from the eastern woods, the tall oaks, the one word DAY. It is never the same. It is always in a totally new language. – Thomas Merton
Photo by Skitterphoto on Pexels.com
The strength of the cold
The strength of the cold, the austerity and power of the landscape, redeems the snow colors and delicate shadows from anything of pastel shading. I can think of no art that has rendered with such things adequately – the nineteenth-century realists were so realistic as to be totally unlike what they painted. There is such a thing as too close a resemblance. In a way, nothing resembles reality less than the average photograph. Nothing resembles substance less than its shadow. To convey the meaning of something substantial, you have to use a sign, which is itself substantial and exists in its own right.
Man is the image of God and not the shadow of God. – Thomas Merton, Journal entry, February 17, 1958
Photo: Portland, Maine – February 5, 2019
on Merton’s birthday
But life is a gift I am glad of, and I do not curse the day when I was born. On the contrary, if I had never been born I would never have had friends to love and be loved by, never have made mistakes to learn from, never have seen new countries, and, as for what I may have suffered, it is inconsequential and indeed part of the great good which life has been and will, I hope, continue to be. – Thomas Merton journal entry, January 31, 1960
unity and a prayer
To be alone by being part of the universe – fitting in completely to an environment of woods and silence and peace. Everything you do becomes a unity and a prayer. Unity within and without. Unity with all living things – without effort or contention. My silence is a part of the whole world’s silence and builds the temple of God without the noise of hammers. – Thomas Merton, Journal January 28, 1953
Photo: Rome, January 2005
Edge of Atlantic 