A Life of Clashes and Discoveries
I begin my jubilee year not exactly clear what I am doing, for everything is always beginning again. If everything in my life remains indefinite to some extent (though it is superficially definite), I accept this as a good thing. As a serious and perhaps troubling thing, always faced with possibilities, I must recognize that many of the "possibilities" are so illusory or so impossible as not to be worth considering. And at times I will not know which to consider, which not.
Coming to grips with my reality--(as if this were not going on all the time) coordinating, incorporating in a living regime all that I can reach to make relevant my presence here, on its way to ending. The religious depth of Ammonias, the perspicacity of Merleau-Ponty, even the tedious subtleties of Sartre, and always the Bible. Meetings of opposites, not carefully planned exclusions and mere inclusion of the familiar. A life of clashes and discoveries, not of repetitions: and yet also deep dread before God, and not trivial excitement.
January 31 and February 2, 1964, V.68-69
I learn so much by looking up the philosophers and authors Merton mentions. Boggles the mind to think how much he read and held in that mind.
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