“Why do I live alone? I don’t know. ...in some mysterious way I am condemned to it. ...I cannot have enough of the hours of silence when nothing happens. When the clouds go by. When the trees say nothing. When the birds sing. I am completely addicted to the realization that just being there is enough, and to add something else is to mess it all up. It would be so much more wonderful to be all tied up in someone...and I know inexorably that this is not for me. It is a kind of life from which I am absolutely excluded. I can’t desire it. I can only desire this absurd business of trees that say nothing, of birds that sing, of a field in which nothing ever happens (except perhaps that a fox comes and plays, or a deer passes by).”
In Thomas Merton, When the Trees Say Nothing (2003), page 177
For Merton, the silence of the trees is a fullness, not an emptiness. The trees say something.
 |
| Abbey of Gethsemani, Kentucky |
Photo courtesy of Erik Eckel
ReplyDeletehttps://www.flickr.com/photos/erikeckel/3735947778/
Gonzalinho
Description by Ave Maria Press
ReplyDeleteFirst published in 2003 and now available in paperback to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of Thomas Merton’s birth, When the Trees Say Nothing has sold more than 60,000 copies and continually inspires readers with its unique collection of Merton’s luminous writings on nature, arranged for reflection and meditation.
Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk, author, poet, social commentator, and perhaps the most influential and widely published spiritual writer of the twentieth century. In When the Trees Say Nothing, editor Kathleen Deignan sheds new light on Merton by focusing on a neglected theme of his writing: the natural world as a manifestation of the divine.
Drawing from Merton’s voluminous writing on nature, Deignan has thematically assembled a collection of lucid, poetic reflections. Chapters on the four elements, the seasons, the Earth and its creatures, and the sun, moon, and stars provide brief passages from his diverse works that reveal the presence of God in creation.
https://www.avemariapress.com/products/when-the-trees-say-nothing?srsltid=AfmBOop2cbQmF1IqUdIGqpCsDhO856uAPsHdnuy67qUtvE5jrBBPsNvh
Gonzalinho
Thomas Merton, When the Trees Say Nothing (2003), Kathleen Deignan, ed., foreword by Thomas Berry, illustrated by John Giuliani
DeleteGonzalinho