bryan sherwood

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:: Tuesday, January 31, 2006 ::
Happy Birthday Tom Merton

Thomas Merton was born January 31, 1915. I would be born four years after Merton's death yet he has impacted my life a great deal. It's as though I have a friend in Fr. Louis although we've only met through his written word. Through him sharing his life, his struggles, his joys, his sorrows, I get to know Merton as he was. It's his honesty that draws me in. He wasn't a perfect man or monk and neither am I. So, Happy Birthday Tom. Thanks for being real.

Here's a somewhat eerie journal entry of Merton's from January 31, 1960.

I never thought to have had such a thing as a forty-fifth birthday. Yet here it is. Why was I always half convinced I would die young? Perhaps a kind of superstition--the fear of admitting a hope of life, which, if admitted, might have to be dashed. But now "I have lived" a fair span of life, and whether or not the fact be important, nothing can alter it. It is certain, infallible--even though that too is only a kind of dream. If I don't make it to sixty-five, it matters less. I can relax. Life is a gift I am glad of: I do not curse the day when I was born. On the contrary, if I had never been born I would never have had friends to love and be loved by, would never have made mistakes to learn from, would never have seen new countries. As for what I may have suffered, it is inconsequential and indeed part of the great good that life has been and will, I hope, continue to be. After all, as I suddenly realize, 45 is still young.

:: Bryan :: 8:09 AM ::
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