a reflection

From A Book of Hours by Thomas Merton

"The forms and individual characters of living and growing things,
of inanimate beings, of animals and flowers and all nature,
constitute thie holiness in the sight of God.

Their inscape is their sanctity.
It is the imprint of His wisdom and His reality in them. The special clumsy beauty of the particular colt on this day in the field, under these clouds in a holiness consecrated to God by His own creative wisdom
and it declares the glory of God.

The pale flowers of the dogwood outside this window are saints.
The little yellow flowers that nobody notices on the edge of that road are saints
looking up into the face of God.

This leaf has its own texture and its own pattern of veins and its own holy shape, and the bass and trout hiding in the deep pools of the river are canonized by their beauty and their strength.

The lakes hidden among the hills are saints,
and the sea too is a saint who praises God
without interruptions
in her majestic dance.

The great, gashed, half-naked mountain is another of God's saints.
There is no ther like him/(her).

He/She is alone his/her own character;
nothing else in the world ever did or ever will imitate God in quite the same way.
That is his/her sanctity.

But what about you? What about me?"

This is from a book Joe Z, from Loose Leaf Hollow...It is called the Book of Hours featuring the writings of Thomas Merton.

When I was a novice and on retreat I found this book called The Seeds of Contemplation. It became like my bible. One of my favorite elderly nuns, S. Noreen Slattery, found me a copy of my own. The part I just copied for you all is from that book. I remember it shook the depths of my soul and nurtured my contemplative spirit. As I rediscovered it in prison, it seems to have aged inside me like a fine wine. Ans the question what about me? pierces my heart. And so I ask the question of God. What about me?