Friday, January 6, 2012

A Year With Thomas Merton - January 6



Winter Hermitage Under Black Pines


It is turning into the most brilliant of winters.

At 6:45--stepped out into the zero cold for a breath of air. Brilliance of Venus hanging as it were on one of the dim horns of Scorpio. Frozen snow. Deep wide blue-brown tracks of the tractor that came to get my gas tank the other day when everything was mucky. Bright hermitage settled quietly under black pines I came in from saying the psalms of the Little Hours and the Rosary in the snow with my nose in pain and sinuses aching. Ears burn now in the silent sunlit room. Whisper of the gas fire. Blue shadows where feet have left frozen prints out there in the snow. I drank a glass of dry sherry and am warm! Lovely morning! How lovely life can be!

January 5, 1968, VII. 33-34

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