Today, I’m off to St. Paul to find a solid pair of running shoes, for I have decided, in a weak and deluded moment, to train for a mini-triathlon in September.  Because the running store doesn’t open until 10, I’m going to visit the Dead Sea Scroll exhibit at the Science Museum of Minnesota.  I’ve been wanting to go for so long.  Today is my day to go.

In the meantime, I leave you with this wonderful poem by Thomas Merton.

In Silence

Be still.
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
To speak your

Name.
Listen
To the living walls.
Who are you?
Who
Are you? Whose
Silence are you?

Who (be quiet)
Are you (as these stones
Are quiet). Do not
Think of what you are
Still less of
What you may one day be.
Rather
Be what you are (but who?) be
The unthinkable one
You do not know.

O be still, while
You are still alive,
And all things live around you
Speaking (I do not hear)
To your own being,
Speaking by the Unknown
That is in you and in themselves.

“I will try, like them
To be my own silence:
And this is difficult. The whole
World is secretly on fire. The stones
Burn, even the stones
They burn me.  How can a man be still or
Listen to all things burning?  How can he dare
To sit with them when
All their silence
Is on fire?”

Happy Fourth, whatever you’re up to.  Remember everything.  Savor everything.  You are living…right now…the life you were meant to live.

Love to you all.

[Post image: Foggy Morning on the Grand Union Canal, photo courtesy of Asian Ramblings from a Life in China]