Happy to Be Marginal
Yesterday I thought it would be snow--skies have been grey and even black for over a week. Clouds of birds gathered around the hermitage. Twenty robins or more, a dozen finches, jays, many juncos (including one I found dead on the porch), other small birds and even a couple of bluebirds--I had not seen them around in the winter. Yesterday morning about two I heard something scampering around in the house and found it was a little flying squirrel. I have no idea how he got in. I thought for a moment of keeping him and taming him, but opened the door and turned him loose. At least let the animals be free and be themselves! While they still can.
A man wrote an article in America magazine on the vernacular liturgy: "If the Church wants to sweep the world like the Beatles..." With this kind of mentality, what can you expect? But I am afraid that is the trouble. The Church is conscious of being inferior now not only to the Communists but to four English kids with mops of hair (and I like them OK). More and more I see the importance of not mopping the world with the mops, Beatle or liturgical. I am glad to be marginal. The best thing I can do for the "world" is stay out of it--in so far as one can.
December 14, 1966, VI.168-69
