It appearing the world has not yet ended, I will continue with today's meditation from Thomas Merton:
My Train's Old Song
Early morning. Blessed rain, cooling the air, making the woods wet, where there was fire and danger of burning for weeks, since before Easter. Fire on the lake side, fire over across the creek in a hollow, fires down the valley. Now all is wet. God be praised for the rain.
Fresh green of the valley. Lovely yellow tulips surprised me outside the hermitage. I thought the rabbits had eaten them all but the rain brought them out. A pure and lovely yellow, purer than that of buttercups.
I regret the time I have wasted here this winter working at books. What moments have been lost--moments of realization, lost in the flux of obsession and work. Statements to show, for what?
A train in the valley--that old song.
"Those who have the dharma should devote themselves only to its practice. Disputes arise from the desire for conquest and are not in accordance with the Way" (from the T'an Ching of Hui Neng).
Unrest, action, protests here and there since atomic testing was renewed. Note the symbolic part taken by milk in the protest. Other foods (wheat = bread) get as much or more strontium-90 in them. Milk is the American symbol. Mother is full of strontium-90. Mothers protest. Motherhood undermined by the bomb. Sex symbolism of the bomb, and question of genetic effects. The sex life of America, Kinsey report, and H-bomb were contemporary.
There is a plan to launch a Polaris submarine called The William Penn!!
May 1 and 4, 1962, IV.216-17
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