The The Merton Institute sent me two quotations from Thomas Merton's Jounrals yesterday. As I read them, I thought to myself, "Well, Andy, haven't we all had days like these?" Here's what Merton said to himself (and to us):

In the afternoon I went out to the old horse barn with the Book of Proverbs and indeed the whole Bible, and I was wandering around in the hayloft, where there is a big gap in the roof. One of the rotting floorboards gave way under me and I nearly feel through. Afterwards I sat and looked out at the hills and the gray clouds and couldn't read anything. When the flies got too bad, I wandered across the bare pasture and sat over by the enclosure wall, perched on the edge of a ruined bathtub that has been placed there for the horses to drink out of. A pipe comes through the wall and plenty of water flows into the bathtub from a spring somewhere in the woods, and I couldn't read there either. I just listened to the clean water flowing and looked at the wreckage of the horsebarn on top of the bare knoll in front of me and remained drugged with happiness and with prayer.

Thomas Merton. Entering the Silence, Journals Volume 1. Ed., Jonathan Montaldo (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997), 363.

A Thought for the Day

Morning after morning I try to study the 6th chapter of St. John, and it is too great. I cannot study it. I simply sit still and try to breathe. (Entering the Silence, 364.)

Image: a photograph of an old barn that Tom Merton took with his 35 mm camera