Tuesday, February 25 — a companion in a quiet time
Quiet time, I learn pretty much every year on retreat, is not about an absence of conversation. It is about refraining from hurrying and fretting. More like breathing than like panting. So here I find myself on Tuesday morning looking out an east-facing window down the ridge onto the tidal estuary Hammonasset River; these days it looks cold, its marsh grasses making a counterpoint with lots of snow. I am not sitting on the porch — too cold for that, but behind a sliding glass door that opens onto the porch.
Thomas Merton came to mind a half hour ago or so. He makes good reading for me in times of stillness. So I browsed a website called “Thomas Merton Quotes” (https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/1711.Thomas_Merton?page=3) and picked four. The highlighted line at the end is my favorite. For more about his life and his death on December 10, 1968, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Merton.
Thinking of you in this quiet time.
john sj
Thomas Merton quotes:
“But there is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question.”
― Thomas Merton
“The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image.”
― Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu
“Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence there would be no rhythm.”
― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
“We do not want to be beginners [at prayer]. but let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything but beginners, all our life!”
― Thomas Merton
“There is no way of telling strangers they are all walking around shining like the sun.”
Thomas Merton
