A Year With Thomas Merton - February 21

Where Your Treasure Is

Tremendous discovery. The Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad!

Kairos! Everything for a long time has been slowly leading up to this, and with this reading a sudden convergence of roads, tendencies, lights, in unity!

A new door. (Looked at it without comprehension nine months ago.)

Yesterday's disgust with the trivial, shallow, contemporary stuff I am tempted to read! No time for that.

Scriptures. Greek patrology. Oriental thought. This is enough to fill every free corner of the day not given to prayer, meditation, duties.

This morning, the splendor of my Mass! Sun pouring in on the altar and in glory of reflected lights from the hammered silver chalice splashed all over the corporal and all around the Host. Deep quiet. The Gospel--"Do not fear, little flock." Where your treasure is, there your heart is also. May I learn the lessons of detachment, even from the little white house of St. Mary of Carmel. But no nonsense about not desiring solitude. On the contrary, to desire it in perfection and in truth. Interior and exterior.

February 4 and 14, 1961, IV.92-93

A Year With Thomas Merton - October 31

The Smell of Night Under Cold Stars

The nights I have spontaneously been remembering the days when I first came to Gethsemani twenty-three years ago: the stars, the cold, the smell of night, the wonder, the Verlassenheit--abandonment (which is something else than despondency)--and above all the melody of the Rorate Coeli. The entire first Advent bore in it all the stamp of my vocation's particular character. The solitude inhabited and pervaded by the cold and mystery and woods and Latin liturgy. It is surprising how far we have got from that cold and the woods and the stars since those days.

My fiftieth year is ending and, if I am not ripe now, I never will be. It is the kairos, say the stars, says Orion, says Aldebaran, says the sickle moon rising behind the dark tall cedar cross. And I remember the words I said the Father Philotheus at St. Bonaventure's, which may have been in part a cliché, but they were sincere and I know at the time that I really meant them. And they were unpremeditated: the "I want to give God everything." Until now I really have not, I think. Or perhaps in a way I have tried to. Certainly not too hard! I cannot say my life in the monastery has been useless, or a failure. Nor can I say where or how it has had a meaning. Nor will I probably find where and how the hermitage has a meaning. It is enough that there is the same anguish and certitude, the same sense of walking on water, as when I first came to the monastery.

October 31, 1964, V.160