A Year With Thomas Merton - March 2

The Comfort of Frogs

One thing the hermitage is making me see--that the universe is my home and I am nothing if not part of it. The destruction of the self that seems to stand outside the universe only as part of its fabric and dynamism. Can I find true being in God who has willed me to exist in the world? This I discover here in the hermitage, not mentally only but in depth. Especially, for example, in the ability to sleep. Frogs kept me awake at the monastery, not here--they are comfort, an extension of my own being--and now also the hum of the electric meter near my bed is nothing (although at the monastery it would have been intolerable). Acceptance of nature and even technology as my true habitat.

March 2, 1965, V.212-13

A Year With Thomas Merton - February 7

My Place in the Scheme of Things

Everything about this hermitage fills me with joy. There are lots of things that could have been far more perfect one way or the other--ascetically and "domestically." But it is the place God has given me after so much prayer and longing--but without my deserving it--and it is a delight. I can imagine no other joy on earth than to have a hermitage and to be at peace in it, to live in silence, to think and write, to listen to the wind and to all the voices of the wood, to live in the shadow of the big cedar cross, to love my brothers and all people, and to pray for the whole world and for peace and good sense among men. So it is "my place" in the scheme of things, and that is sufficient!

Reading some studies on St. Leonard of Port Maurice and his retirement house (Ritiro) and hermitage of the Incontro. How clearly Vatican II has brought into question all the attitudes that he and his companions took completely for granted: the dramatic barefoot procession from Florence to the Incontro in the snow--the daily half-hour self-flagellation in common--etc. This used to be admired, if prudently avoided by all in the Church. Depth psychology, etc., have made these things forever questionable--they belong to another age. And yet there has to be hardness and rigor in the solitary life. The hardness is there by itself. The cold, the solitude, the labor, the need for poverty to keep everything simple and manageable, the need for discipline of long meditation in silence.

February 24, 1965, V.209-10

A Year With Thomas Merton - January 5

Her Presence Demands My Love

A cold night. Woke up to find the night filled with the depth and silence of snow. Stayed up here in the hermitage for supper last night, but having cooked soup and cut up a pear and a banana for dessert, and made toast, finally came to the conclusion that is all too elaborate. If there were no better reason for fasting, the mere fact of saving time would be a good enough reason. For the bowl and the saucepan have to be washed, and I have only a bucket of rainwater for washing, etc., etc. Taking only coffee for breakfast makes a lot of sense, because I can read quietly and sip my two mugs of coffee at leisure, and it really suffices for the morning.

There is a great need for discipline in meditation. Reading helps. The early morning hours are good, though in the morning meditation (one hour) I am easily distracted by the fire. An hour is not much, but I can be more meditative in the hour of reading that follows (and which goes much too fast). The presence of Our Lady is important to me. Elusive but I think a reality in this hermitage. Her influence is a demand of love, and no amount of talking will explain it. I need her and she is there. I should perhaps think of it explicitly more often.

In the afternoon, work takes up so much time, and there can be so much. Just keeping the place clean is already a big task. Then there is wood to be chopped, etc. The fire is voracious--but pleasant company.

January 30, 1965, V.196-97

A Year With Thomas Merton - July 13

Psalms and the Tao

In the evening I began a perpetual Psalter—a necessity—not to say a given quantity any period of time, but just to keep the Psalter going from now on until I die (or can no longer do it). Need for the continuity the Psalter offers—continuity with my own past and with the past of eremitism. The Latin Psalter is for me! It is a deep communion with the Lord and with His saints of my Latin Church. To be in communion with the Saints of my tradition is by that fact to be more authentically in communion with those of the Greek, Syriac, etc., tradition, who reach me through my own Fathers.

St. Elias today. He has something to do with it! He is in it!

Great peace for the last couple of days, since the decision that I am to become a full-time hermit. Any day one could write “great peace,” but this is a very special and new dimension of peace: a tranquility that is not got by cultivation. It is given, and “not as the world gives do I give unto you.” The peace is not “it” but a confrontation with Thou. Martin Buber is certainly right. Confrontation with “Thee” in this word of solitude. All because of this one word, yesterday. All unified in this. One will, one command, one gift. A new creation of heavenly simplicity. I will write little about this, surely. Enough.

“If a man hears Tao in the morning and dies in the evening, his life has not been wasted.” I think now I really know what this means.

July 19 and 20, 1965, V.273-74