Solitude in the Storm

Solitude in the Storm
Originally uploaded by Scott Dungan.

Absent from the Wedding Feast

... Living so close to the cold, you feel spring. And this is man's mission! The earth can not feel all this. We must. But living away from the earth and the trees, we fail them. We are absent from the wedding feast.

There are moments of great loneliness and lostness in this solitude, but often then come other, deeper moments of hope and understanding, and I realize that these would not be possible in their purity, their simple, secret directions anywhere but in solitude. I hope to be worthy of them ...

From Thomas Merton's journal entry for February 17, 1966, VI. 18-19.

The silence could be felt this morning. I'm glad I stopped by Bellevue Beach Park on the way to work.