A Lost Book at the Hermitage

Today I have been searching for one of my books by Thomas Merton.  In reality it was not composed by him as a book.  Someone with probably mixed motives,  gathered writings from his journals during his time as a hermit in Kentucky, and arranged them more or less on a day by day basis to allow for a year’s worth of daily reading, each tied to a corresponding date in his journal.  

When I left my office for my surgery, I knew that I would not want to be cleaning the space up afterwards in the period between my return and my retirement. Thus, I packed out most everything as if I was retiring then.  One of the things I packed up, and I will be damned if I can find it now, was the “A Year with Thomas Merton” tome.  

In many ways my current daily existence has attributes of living in hermitage.  I awake and help with breakfast.  I clean the dishes alone afterward.  I do assigned chores, washing, making the bed and relighting the fire in the wood stove.  After my chores are done I take on things I need to do with some urgency, such as planning for my European escape. 

In the in between moments, I write and correspond. Somedays it is letters.  I personally find this to be a troubled period in the history of the nation of my birth.  The problems I see provide a wealth of topics to correspond with people on. Sometimes it is memories. I maintain a blog.  How quaint I hear you say.  Well, what I post is pretty much of an online journal.  Maybe, someday I will back through it and craft a narrative piece of fiction.

Building a fire, writing, contemplating life’s meaning as I sit recovering from surgery for cancer, and ruminating on my relationship with the sacred, mostly alone, well I am in the Merton zone. In the excerpts from his journal I have routinely found things that opened my heart up to a new avenue of thought on holiness.  Occasionally a comment he offers as an aside in his writing will offer a breath of spring air to my ever thirsty soul.

I won’t deny that I get inspiration from other sources.  Buddhist thought does impact on my hermit like moments.  Pena Chodron’s writing usually impacts me.  Today I read an article from her entitled On Not Losing Heart. He is the quote that struck me most:

The overall point is that the way not to lose heart is to realize how everything we do matters.  It can go either way.  If we go toward defensiveness, closing down and unconsciousness, we add those elements to a planet that already suffers enough from such tendencies.  On the other hand, if we allow ourselves to feel our vulnerability, if we sit up tall when we want to collapse and if refrain from striking out when we are provoked, we are having a positive effect on the larger world.

Yes time alone allows for thoughts on topics other than I am hungry and I got to fix that. Here is to occasional hermit moments.