Salty like hot dogs (and tears). Sweet like marmalade (and life).
Fear narrows the little entrance of our heart.
It shrinks up our capacity to love.
It freezes up our power to give ourselves.
Thomas Merton, Seasons of Celebration
At the root of all war is fear.
Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation
… and fear is a color. As soon as it touches our liberty, it stains it and renders it unlike to itself.
Thomas Merton, quoting St. Bernard in The Silent Life
In Seasons of Celebration, Thomas Merton reflects on the writings of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. Saint Bernard spoke of three advents of Christ.
The first advent is “that in which He comes to seek and to save the lost.”
The third advent is “that in which He comes to takes us to Himself.”
The second advent, the one which I’ve been thinking on ever since reading about it, is the present advent which “is taking place at every moment of our own earthly life as wayfarers.”
Thomas Merton said, referring to the second advent, the one between the first and third,
To meditate on these two Advents
is to sleep between the arms of God
with His left hand under our head
and His right hand embracing us.
It is also to sleep ‘between the lots’ —
that is to say to
‘live at peace in the midst of our inheritance’.
Taking out the door totally opened up the room.
Over the years, the room slowly become the repository for everything. I mean, the attic was pretty full and the stuff had to go somewhere. This is an American problem.
When we hoed the room out at Christmas — when the feng shui (Frank Schwa) was all wrong — we discovered that the slider no longer closed properly and was, in fact, warped. The bleak midwinter is not the proper time to change out a slider. It’s the time to keep the door shut and locked. And the 40 year draperies mostly drawn shut — because, if we’re going to be closed up and closed in, we might as well go for broke.
But when the workmen took the old slider out last week, we had a whole new room.
The draperies, or what was left of them (they had somewhat disintegrated when Bud took them down), went straight to the trash.
Now the sun pours in.
I’m tempted not to replace the drapes, at least not during the summer.
This morning, I sat in the room with a whole new feng shui. Sunny. Bright. Inviting.
A doe and her fawn nibbled grass outside the window. I wished I had washed the windows or not had the screen in.
Instagram should make such filters — just to keep things realistic.
Still, Frank Schwa would be happy with the room.
Writer’s block is …
Some of the top Google responses for that are:
… a condition, primarily associated with writing, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work, or experiences a creative slowdown. (Wikipedia)
…. a myth. (https://janefriedman.com/reasons-for-writers-block/)
…often caused by conflicted feelings. (www.cws.illinois.edu/workshop/writers/tips/writersblock/)
…simply a minor speed bump that you can overcome easily and stay in the creative flow. (http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/7-ways-to-overcome-writers-block)
…your secret weapon to becoming a better and more resilient writer. (www.copyblogger.com/use-writers-block/)
So, for good or for bad, I’m putting out a post today.
I used today’s prompt: final
Which sounds so very, um, final.
How about last? Can I do last?
Here’s the last picture taken on my phone —
an unedited sunset from the other night.
It won’t be the last
Or the final
Sunset
or
Picture
Across from my parents’ house a little building we called the milk house used to stand. I don’t know that it was ever used for milking animals. We incorporated it into the pig pen at one point and later, when we had no pigs, used it for storage. The milk house was filled with shutters and windows and bee hives and rusty things and broken things and stuff.
And then the roof caved in.
My brother-in-law and my sister drove up from Florida with two carpet cleaners. After cleaning some of the carpets in my parents’ house, Gil went to work on the old milk house. When they drove back to Florida, they left behind the carpet cleaners and had in their car a cast iron pig trough and an old gate. It was the family version of the trading-up game.
Three walls of the milk house are still standing, one with a window facing the road.
A lonely pane of glass remains in an upper corner, dirty and dusty, care-worn. It’s my new favorite place to view the world.
If it weren’t so close to the road, and if trucks didn’t drive past not following the speed limit, roaring like monsters and shaking the earth, I might sit on the bank for hours and watch the spider weave its web and the leaves change color through that window.
I’m quite sure that somewhere in that window is at least one deep spiritual truth.
The Trinity framed out.
The light pouring through.
Now I see through a glass darkly, but with a slight shift of my eyes I see face to face.
The undeniable brokenness, no matter how neatly it is stacked.
What treasures lie in broken things!
My sister and her husband got a rusty pig trough which I have to admit was pretty cool, but I think I got the better treasure — a window to the world.
R is for Reading.
I spent some time at Laity Lodge with Corrie ten Boom.
The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.
Rene Descartes
K is for Kindred Spirit and Kindness and a friend whose name begins with K who embodies both of those.
I don’t want to embarrass her by saying her name so I’m just posting this embarrassing photograph from a memorable segment of my trip to San Antonio…
Hot Dogs and Marmalade 