Lenten Meditation: Merton

Many thanks to blurt.

A Signed Confession of Crimes Against the State

Thomas Merton

I am the kind of person who must sooner or later, inevitably, fill pages of blank paper with the confession of secret crimes against the state. Why not be prepared? There is no time like the present – and who, in such a present, can promise himself the future?

My very existence is an admission of guilt. Placed before a blank sheet of paper, any blank sheet of paper, I instinctively begin to set down the list of my latest crimes. What else can I do? The very thoughts of a person like me are crimes against the state. All I have to do is think: and immediately I become guilty. In spite of all my efforts to correct this lamentable tendency to subversiveness and intellectual sabotage, I cannot possibly get rid of it.

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I am quite fond of Thomas Merton. For those not in the know, he was a Trappist monk in Kentucky and an amazing writer. Go read Seven Story Mountain.

Trust me.

Breakfasted on cold cereal and the internet

Soon there will be coffee and walking down by Commencement Bay. Then writing. And stuff.

Snarky quote of the day:

If you cut out all the passages in the Bible where Jesus talks about the poor, you'd have the perfect container to smuggle Rush Limbaugh's drugs in. (Al Franken)