The fire of the wild white sun has eaten up the distance between hope and despair. Dance in this sun you tepid idiot. Wake up and dance in the clarity of perfect contradiction. Thomas Merton, “A Book of Hours,” Thursday. 

This is why I love Thomas Merton. This little book has been a constant companion for several years and I am glad I reopened it today. It spoke to my heart which has felt a little forgotten by God lately. I needed a reminder and maybe you do too. It’s possible to know, really know that you are never forgotten by God on one level and on another feel like you’re six years old again feeling uncertain and lost, looking for your parents.

Ever feel like you ended up in God’s lost and found bin?

But no matter what the enemy whispers in the dark, I have the light of truth ever before me. It’s everywhere. In what I see around me, in what He’s done before, in how I can know through the word that His promises are true. In the quickening of the Holy Spirit which resides side by side with all the other garbage I subject Him to on a daily basis.

I like to imagine His face as He assures His disciples from the mountain just before He goes back Home, the last part of Matthew 28:20, “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” I love how He uses surely and always…….He knew these times of uncertainty and fear would come. I can also imagine the faces of the Disciples as the clouds swallowed Him up.

I can imagine it felt like when I was a kid and I saw Mary Poppins say goodbye and lift off. The emotions were so real to me. I remember the sadness, the emptiness. The what now?

There goes the best friend I ever had, there goes the magic, the goodness, the music, the love.

When God made a surprise visit on Pentecost, all the magic, the joy, the music came back like a flood. The hard times didn’t disappear, but neither did God. And so shall it ever be until He comes again.

When I hold all the impossibilities He’s brought me through up against the Light, it no longer matters that I can see all the way to the end. I may not be able to see around the next bend, but I know the road is secure. I know the builder.

Responsory:

O great God, Father of all things, Whose infinite light is darkness to me, Whose immensity is to me as the void, You have called me forth out of yourself because you love me in Yourself, and I am a transient expression of your inexhaustible and eternal reality. I could not know You, I would be lost in this darkness, I would fall away from you into this void, if You did not hold me to Yourself in the Heart of Your only begotten Son. Thomas Merton:  “Book of Hours”