Wednesday, December 21, 2011

A Year With Thomas Merton - December 21



Christmas Frenzies


Quiet, early morning, dark. Distress and confusion of this year. What will it bring? Yet I think the foolish business about bomb shelters, with all its enormous stupidities--down to the plastic burial suit for $50.00--has got people "roused," as the saying goes, and there is a lot of protest. The sane ones have been too passive, and they are beginning to be forced to react. But perhaps it is too late.

Life is madder and madder, except that the woods and fields are always a relief. Bright sun on the big sycamore by the mill yesterday and light snow underfoot. And silence. Silence now also, and the night.

I still haven't ploughed through all the pile of Christmas mail, not all of it. It appalls me. I haven't read enough of the things I should be reading and want to read: Clement, Gregory of Nyssa. Then again I have worked myself into an equivocal and silly position with curiositas. By now that should be familiar. Yet one must speak and act now. But I pray I may someday learn how rightly. I feel there is not much time left for one to be learning the most important things, and I will have to trust to God for all that I lack and will continue to lack.

December 31, 1961, IV.190

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