A Year With Thomas Merton - November 19

Being a Teacher

Finishing William of Conche's Philosophia Mundi. Beautiful little chapter on the Teacher. I was very moved by it. I usually ignore this element in my own vocation, but obviously I am a writer, a student, and a teacher, as well as a contemplative of sorts, and my solitude, etc., is that of a writer and teacher, not a pure hermit. And the great thing is, or should be, love of truth. I know there is nothing more precious than the bond of charity created by communicating and sharing the truth. This really is my whole life.

Yesterday Aidan Nally came up to me by the woodshed and said, "Father, it seems the wars have ceased."

Later I conjectured he was referring to the cessation of atmospheric nuclear testing announced by Kennedy.

Today (a blacker day than usual and there have been many) Aidan Nally met me out by the greenhouse just before dinner and uttered some prophecies of doom according to something he had seen on TV. None of it was clear. Probably the Russians trying to make up for their loss of face over Cuba. Something on Germany? Berlin?

The problem is not to lose one's sense of perspective and seriousness. It is always "the end" and each time it gets closer. The students at the Oxford Union drank up their best wine in the Cuban crisis. They will not have any for this one, whatever it is--if it is a crisis, and not something imagined by Aidan. But Aidan's imagination is as good as any paper--only a little foggy.

November 13 and 17, 1962, IV.264-66

A Year With Thomas Merton - May 21

It appearing the world has not yet ended, I will continue with today's meditation from Thomas Merton:

My Train's Old Song

Early morning. Blessed rain, cooling the air, making the woods wet, where there was fire and danger of burning for weeks, since before Easter. Fire on the lake side, fire over across the creek in a hollow, fires down the valley. Now all is wet. God be praised for the rain.

Fresh green of the valley. Lovely yellow tulips surprised me outside the hermitage. I thought the rabbits had eaten them all but the rain brought them out. A pure and lovely yellow, purer than that of buttercups.

I regret the time I have wasted here this winter working at books. What moments have been lost--moments of realization, lost in the flux of obsession and work. Statements to show, for what?

A train in the valley--that old song.

"Those who have the dharma should devote themselves only to its practice. Disputes arise from the desire for conquest and are not in accordance with the Way" (from the T'an Ching of Hui Neng).

Unrest, action, protests here and there since atomic testing was renewed. Note the symbolic part taken by milk in the protest. Other foods (wheat = bread) get as much or more strontium-90 in them. Milk is the American symbol. Mother is full of strontium-90. Mothers protest. Motherhood undermined by the bomb. Sex symbolism of the bomb, and question of genetic effects. The sex life of America, Kinsey report, and H-bomb were contemporary.

There is a plan to launch a Polaris submarine called The William Penn!!


May 1 and 4, 1962, IV.216-17