A Year With Thomas Merton - January 31

The Gift of My Life

(Thomas Merton's birthday; born in 1915 in Prades, France)

A lovely little icon arrived that Bob Rambusch got for us in Salonika, I believe. He had it cleaned in New York and here it is--not astonishingly beautiful but simple and holy and joyous. It radiates a kind of joy and strength that one would not look for or see, if one looked only superficially. I blessed this icon today (it had been sold and lost its consecration by the defiling touch of commerce) and I prayed aloud before it an Eastern prayer and hymn to the icon of Our Lady of Kazan. Her coming is such a great grace--her presence a great comfort. I have placed the icon over the altar of Our Lady in the novitiate chapel.

Why was I always half-convinced I would die young? Perhaps a kind of superstition--the fear of admitting a hope of life which, if admitted, might have to be dashed. But now "I have lived" a fair span of life and, whether or not the fact be important, nothing can alter it. It is certain, infallible--even though that too is only a kind of dream. If I don't make it to sixty-five, it matters less. I can relax. 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 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.

January 31, 1960, III.372-73

A Year With Thomas Merton - January 30

On the Eve of a Birthday

Snow, silence, the talking fire, the watch on the table. Sorrow. I will get cleaned up (my hands are dirty). I will sing the psalms of my birthday.

No matter what mistakes and illusions have marked my life, most of it I think has been happiness and, as far as I can tell, truth. There were whole seasons of insincerity, largely when I was under twenty-one and followed friends that were not my own kind. But after my senior year at Columbia things got straight. I can remember many happy and illumined days and whole blocks of time. There were a few nightmare times in childhood. But at Saint Antonin, with Father, life was a revelation. Then again, at so many various times and places, in Sussex (at Rye and in the country), at Oakham, at Strasbourg, at Rome above all, in New York, especially upstate Olean and St. Bonaventure's. I remember one wonderful winter morning arriving at Olean to spend Christmas with Bob Lax. Arrivals and departures on the Erie were generally great. The cottage on the hill, too--then Cuba: wonderful days there. All this I have said before and the whole world knows it.

The profoundest and happiest times of my life have been in and around Gethsemani, and also some of the most terrible. Mostly the happy moments were in the woods and fields, alone, with the sky and the sun, and up here at the hermitage. And with the novices (afternoons at work).

January 30, 1965, V.198-99