Thursday, April 16, 2009

On leaving the door open...


Too much thinking lately. Pondering. Wondering. Journaling.
Too much. I am too much in my head. Asking too many questions.
Finding too few answers. On every topic: politics, parenting, art, music,
marriage, faith, friendship, loneliness, travel, love, health, wealth, redistribution of wealth, paying taxes, passion, sex, celibacy, solitude,
living the life I am meant to live, teaching, coaching, Valladolid, San Francisco, Madrid, Rome, airports and airplanes, backpacks and carry-ons, wanting to run away from home, wishing it was.

Big stuff.


"The sense of disaster and helplessness. And one must say it is all right? It is absurd. There is no clear answer to it. The point is not to decide between this and that crazy answer when all the answers are crazy. There is no clear answer...

"All this torment comes from the contradictions I have allowed in myself by being open. By not closing all the gates and doors and carefully locking them and then winding myself up in a blanket and going to sleep. All the things a hermit should not do, I have done... I have not closed the doors. I should be writing the new English version of some hymn nobody is ever going to sing."


Learning to Love: The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 6, 1966-67, by Thomas Merton, Trappist monk at Gethesemane Abbey, Kentucky

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mmmmmm. Great post. Much to ponder. Or not.

Just to sit with it. And then go do something fun and get outside ourselves!

What an amazing quote, too. Wow.

Life.

(Big Sigh)

then

(Big blessed, knowing, grateful smile!)

Amy said...

I think WAY too much ... all the time, actually. I also want to "run away," as I'm a vagabond at heart and may very well act on it one day!