hope rooted...

Last night  I spent an hour in the dark transept of St. Patrick’s Cathedral where I go now & then in my more lonely moods. An old argument with me is that the true religious force in the world is not the church but the world itself: the mysterious callings of Nature & her response. In the cathedral I felt one presence; on the highway I felt another. The priest in me worshipped one God; the poet another God. The priest worshipped Mercy & Love; the poet, Beauty & Might. As I sat dreaming with humanity, I felt how the glittering altar worked on my senses stimulating & consoling; I went tramping through the fields & beheld every leaf & blade of grass revealing or betokening the Invisible……Wallace Stevens

it’s the awesomeness, the daunting past & the intricate human language of connection that calls us to bow our heads to cross & mountain….we find healing in the flickering candles, the tiny leaf, & the truth of the senses…

and yet, we can’t always reconcile our place…can’t allow love’s mysteries….we separate our God from each other…..remove our hearts from experience….disengage soul from faith….

Don’t you ever,

You up in the sky,

Don’t you ever get tired

Of having clouds between you & us?

….Nootka Prayer

let hope work its tiny miracles….

Music is being played to the cows in the milking barn. Rules have been made & confirmed: only sacred music is to be played to the cows, not ‘classical’ music. The music is to make the cows give more milk. The sacred music is to keep the brothers who work in the cow barn recollected. For sometime now sacred music has been played to the cows in the milking barn. They have not given more milk. The brothers have not been any more recollected than usual. I believe the cows will soon be hearing Beethoven. Then we shall have classical, perhaps worldly milk & the monastery will prosper. (Later: It was true. The hills resounded with Beethoven. The monastery has prospered. The brother mainly concerned with the music, however, has departed.)

…..Thomas Merton