Still Reading Merton

Worked all afternoon on trying to get through the last half of Thomas Merton, Spiritual Master with very slow going.

Whereas on Thursday I ate it up, reading two hundred pages and taking relevant notes, I kept losing my focus, getting distracted on aspects of Merton's life and philosophy unrelated to the proposal I'm writing.

Angus got home from teaching and I told him I had gotten through a whopping 31 pages. I have no idea how it happened. The phone kept ringing, Hobbes, our wild kitty kept trying to climb on me and the keyboard, I was tired from inadequate sleep and, perhaps, simply unable to absorb any more ideas.

Struggling through another twenty pages after dinner - it isn't just reading, but searching for supportive material for my premise and writing down the quotes - I fell asleep in my chair. I slept fitfully, but was unable to rouse myself to go to bed. I was that tired, with a sleepiness that borders on nausea when one is awakened.

I woke and went to bed around one, but lay there, awake, and unable to sleep. So I'm reading again - it's nearly two in the morning - but have taken a break for this post.

We are to go for our Christmas tree this morning.

I had a half dream/perhaps half thinking about the hostages, about being in the room with them. I felt it was, perhaps, possible they would be released.

Ah, and was it last night that Steven King came into my dream? I was in a book store, perhaps I worked there (it makes sense since I have written two books, one of which I've just finished) and Steven King walked in. He went to the back, looking in the shelves, and then came back up front and we sat at a table talking.

He didn't say whether he liked my books, or had read my books, but told me he knew what I was "trying to do" and thought my blend of nature imagery with the theme of my novel was good.

It's always an encouraging sign when successful, creative people make appearances in my dreams. Somehow, I'm sure it is the mind/consciousness integrating something about that person - who has become an archetype in our collective consciousness - into my own. In this case, I could do with a bit of Steven's success and, of course, writing habits.

Here is a prayer from Merton's work Thoughts In Solitude:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

It was a prophetic prayer, for he died soon after he delivered it.

I'm so grateful for this warm house, for my laptop, for the light and the tea and the pumpkin bread and the gift of sight and the ability to type and the motivation to read and learn and still, perhaps, do something worthwhile in the world.

Shall I end with a fragment from Rumi?

Friend, there's a window
that opens from heart to heart,
and there are ways of closing it

completely, not a needle's eye of access.

Open or shut, both are sometimes
appropriate.

The deepest ignorance is not to know about
this window.