Whatever else can be said about Thomas Merton, and much has been said, one thing is certain: he was a monk who loved trees: "One might say I had decided to marry the silence of the forest, he wrote. The sweet dark warmth of the whole world will have to be my wife. Out of the heart of that dark warmth comes the secret that is heard only in silence … Perhaps I have an obligation to preserve the stillness, the silence, the poverty, the virginal point of pure nothingness which is at the center of all other loves.” If you want to find your way home again – that place of home that connects your heartbeat to the heartbeat of the universe itself – find your way to silence. Love yourself enough to spend time at the center of “all other loves”.
In friendship and blessing,
Peri and Barbara