Dancing in the Water of Life (The Journals of Thomas Merton Book 5)

by Thomas Merton

In solitude everything has its weight for good or evil, and one must attend carefully to everything. If you apply yourself carefully to what you do, great springs of strength and truth are released in you. If you drift or go inattentively, automatic and obsessed, the strength is against you and becomes a storm of confusion, and dashes you on the rocks. And when the power, the energy of truth is well released, then everything becomes good and makes sense, and there is no contrast to be made between solitude and community or anything else, because all is good. It seems to me, though, that these springs do not get to run for me in the community, and that I simply go along in the heavy, secure, confused mentality of the community (though I know that for others the springs are running). And instead of everything being one, everything is merely confused. Though now, as a result of solitude, the psalms in choir and especially the hymns and antiphons (Advent!!) have all their old juice and much more too, a new mystery.