A Year With Thomas Merton - January 21

My Deep Youthful Shyness

A bright, snowy afternoon, delicate blue clouds of snow blowing down off the frozen trees. Forcibly restrained myself from much work around the hermitage, made sure of my hour's meditation and will do more later. How badly I need it. I realize how great is the tempo and pressure of work I have been in down in the community--with many irons in the fire. True, I have in the community gained the knack of dropping everything and completely relaxing my attention and forgetting the work by going out and looking at the hills. Good that the novitiate work is not exceedingly absorbing. (Biggest trouble now is letter writing.)

Shall I look at the past as if it were something to analyze and think about? Rather, I thank God for the present, but for the present that is His and in Him. The past: I am inarticulate about it now. I remember irrelevant moments of embarrassment, and my joys are seen to have been largely meaningless. Yet, as I sit here in this wintry and lonely and quiet place, I suppose I am the same person as the eighteen-year-old riding back alone into Bournemouth on a bus out of the New Forest, where I had camped a couple of days and nights. I suppose I regret most my lack of love, my selfishness and glibness (covering a deep shyness and need of love) with girls who, after all, did love me, I think, for a time. My great fault was my inability really to believe it, and my efforts to get complete assurance and perfect fulfillment.

January 30, 1965, V.197-98

A Year With Thomas Merton - August 6

The Blessing of an Ordinary Work

The blessing of Prime under the tall pines, in the cool of early morning, behind the hermitage. The blessing of sawing wood, cutting grass, cleaning house, washing dishes. The blessing of a quiet, alert concentrated, fully “present” meditation. The blessing of God’s presence and guidance. I am very aware of the meaning of God’s presence and guidance. I am very aware of the meaning of faith and fidelity, and of the implications of the relationship they establish. This place is marked with the blessed sign of my covenant with Him Who has redeemed me. May I never fail this goodness, this mercy!

A superb passage from Irenaeus (Adversus haereses, 4.39):

“If you are the work of God, wait patiently for the hand of your artist who makes all things at an opportune time….Give to Him a pure and supple heart and watch over the form which the artist shapes in you…lest, in hardness, you lose the traces of his fingers. By guarding this conformity, you will ascend to perfection….To do this is proper to the kindness of God; to have it done is becoming to human nature. If, therefore, you hand over to Him what is yours, namely, faith in Him and submission, you will see his skill and be a perfect work of God.”

August 25 and 26, 1965, V.284-85

A Year With Thomas Merton - August 5

The Present Feast

The grip the present has on me. That is the one thing that has grown most noticeably in the spiritual life—nothing much else has. The rest dims as it should. I am getting older. The reality of now—the unreality of all the rest. The unreality of ideas and explanations and formulas. I am. The unreality of all the rest. The pigs shriek. Butterflies dance together against the blue sky at the end of the woodshed. The buzz saw stands outside there, half covered with dirty and tattered canvas. The trees are fresh and green in the sun (more rain yesterday). Small clouds, inexpressibly beautiful and silent and eloquent, over the silent woodlands. What a celebration of light, quietness, and glory! This is my feast, sitting here in the straw!

August 25, 1958, III.214-15