the way you walk, the way you stand ...

(Photo by Paul Davis)

“It is not by preaching or expounding the sutras (scriptures) that you fulfill the task of awakening others to self-realization; it is rather by the way you walk, the way you stand, the way you sit and the way you see things.” 
—Thich Nhat Hanh

(Photo by Paul Davis)

a hole in a flute

I am
a hole in a flute
that the Christ’s breath moves through—
listen to this
music.

- Daniel Ladinsky, inspired by Hafiz, “The Christ’s Breath,” Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West (Penguin Compass: 2002), 153. Used with permission

The Useless Life

Brother Paul Quenon outside the hermitage;

Several people have referred me to this article published in Parabola Magazine. It is a chapter from Paul Quenon's book, In Praise of the Useless Life: A Monk’s Memoir by Br. Paul Quenon, O.C.S.O. The chapter is reprinted with permission of Ave Maria Press.

I love the title of the book and have particular fondness for Gethsemane and her monks.

"This retreat, no rain came all week long until the last day, late afternoon, and then the downpour was gratifying and robust. Eventually clouds broke and sun came through while rain continued, showering sunlight and rain together. I cartwheeled, became a child again, back in my home yard, knowing only this yard as the whole world, suddenly changed into something wondrous. Rain glistened, backlit by the sun, showing every falling drop for all its worth. Rain appeared to be falling from the sun itself. This rain was meant for this space, felt like something made for only here and now. The narrow yonder of the field where trees attend Our Lady’s statue took on a magical, silver sheen where air misted—a lost wilderness, reverting to some ancient, mythical epoch."

Read the whole chapter HERE.

unknown territory: the present moment

Buddha, Rubin Museum of Art, Photograph by Car396

"A hero’s journey isn’t necessarily a long ordeal. At any given moment, we can leave the self-enclosed world of our thought and touch down in the present moment, which is always unknown territory. Yet it also feels like coming home. It seems miraculous to move from one state of being to another, from thinking to opening to presence." 

- Tracy Cochran, from "Speechless", published in Parabola Magazine, July 28, 2018

the hours of silence when nothing happens

Photo by Beth Cioffoletti

Why do I live alone? I don’t know.... In some mysterious way I am condemned to it.... I cannot have enough of the hours of silence when nothing happens. When the clouds go by. When the trees say nothing. When the birds sing. I am completely addicted to the realization that just being there is enough, and to add something else is to mess it all up. It would be so much more wonderful to be all tied up in someone ... and I know inexorably that this is not for me. It is a kind of life from which I am absolutely excluded. I can’t desire it. I can only desire this absurd business of trees that say nothing, of birds that sing, of a field in which nothing ever happens (except perhaps that a fox comes and plays, or a deer passes by). This is crazy. It is lamentable. I am flawed, I am nuts. I can’t help it. Here I am, now, ... happy as a coot. The whole business of saying I am flawed is a lie. I am happy. I cannot explain it.... Freedom, darling. This is what the woods mean to me. I am free, free, a wild being, and that is all that I ever can really be. I am dedicated to it, addicted to it, sworn to it, and sold to it. It is the freedom in me that loves you.... Darling, I am telling you: this life in the woods is IT. It is the only way. It is the way everybody has lost. ... It is life, this thing in the woods. I do not claim it is real. All I say is that it is the life that has chosen itself for me. A Midsummer Diary for M. June 23, 1966

Merton, Thomas (2003-02-01). When the Trees Say Nothing: Writings on Nature (pp. 135-136). Ave Maria Press - A. Kindle Edition.

Now

 

Aurora over Dempster Highway, Photo by Fr. Jon Hansen jonhansencssr.com

Now is the time to get up and go to the tower.
Now is the time to meet you, God, where the night is wonderful,
where the road is almost without substance under my feet,
where all the mysterious junk in the belfry scorns the proximate coming
of three new bells,
where the forest opens out under the moon,
and the living things sing terribly
that only the present
is eternal
and that all things having a past and a future
are doomed to pass away.

-Thomas Merton, Entering the Silence, p. 483

Your Silence

 

Study for the Tabernacle in the Chapel of the Rosary, Venice, Henri Matisse

 

This nearness to You in the darkness is too simple and too close for excitement. It is commonplace for all things to live an unexpected life in the night: but their life is illusory and unreal. The illusion of sound only intensifies the infinite substance of Your Silence.

Here at Gethsemani, in this place where I made my vows, where I have had my hands anointed for the Holy Sacrifice, where I have had Your priesthood seal the depth and intimate summit of my being, a word, a thought, would defile the quiet of Your inexplicable love.

- Thomas Merton, Entering the Silence, pp. 482-83