Last week I had a whirlwind of appointments from New York to Los Angeles and back again in San Francisco. It was lovely, and fun, and magical, and exciting, and I'm so lucky to do what I do...but it was exhausting.
So I was happy to slip away into a blissfully quiet weekend at the end of it. I took a stroll Saturday morning simply because I'm in love with my new city and after being away I just wanted to be outside and breath it. I almost walked right past this shop when something in the window caught my attention: beautiful words by Thomas Merton.
I had decided to marry
the silence of the forest.
The sweet dark warmth of
the whole world
will have to be my wife.
Out of the heart of
that dark warmth
comes the secret that is heard
only in silence,
but is the root of all the secrets
that are whispered
by all the lovers in their beds
all over the world.
So perhaps I have an obligation to
preserve the stillness,
the silence, the poverty,
the original virginal point of
pure nothingness
which is at the center
of all other loves. - Thomas Merton
At a time in my life where I'm discovering the layers of difference between what it means to be alone and be a pair, what it means to share publicly and treasure privately your rich inner life, and how with a flip of perspective or life events you can be exactly where you never knew you wanted to be, these words on stillness and secrets and unconventional turns resonated with me...
Did it touch you too?
