Walk in the woods

from Thomas Merton’s writings

“WHAT IS SERIOUS to men is often very trivial in the sight of God.  What in God might appear to us as "play" is perhaps what God takes the most seriously.  At any rate the Lord plays in the garden of creation, and if we could let go of our own obsession with what we think is the meaning of it all, we might be able to hear God's call and follow in the mysterious, cosmic dance.  We do not have to go very far to catch echoes of that game, and of that dancing.  When we are alone on a starlit night; when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children; when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet Basho we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash -- at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the "newness," the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.

    For the world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness.  The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast.  The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity, and despair.  But it does not matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there.  Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it or not.

    Yet the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance.”

    “WHAT A THING it is to sit absolutely alone,

    in the forest, at night, cherished by this

    wonderful, unintelligible,

    perfectly innocent speech,

    the most comforting speech in the world,

    the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges,

    and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows!

    

    Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it.

    It will talk as long as it wants, this rain.

    As long as it talks I am going to listen.”

“NO WORDS ever written can compare with the sound of the wind in the pine trees.”

“THAT'S HOW I pray.  Walk in the garden, or better, in the woods.”