. . . and Thomas Merton says,"The whole mechanism of modern life is geared for a flight from God and from the spirit into the wilderness of neurosis. Even our monasteries are not free from the smell and clatter of our world."

I was just watching an old movie on TV . . . it doesn't matter which one . . . well, maybe it does. Yul Brynner is a Russian officer in Hungary detaining a group of travellers trying to get across the border into Austria . . . and he really wants to kiss (I think) Deborah Kerr, but neither of them will admit it. And now I'm listening to Billie Holiday singing "I'd gladly surrender myself to you, body and soul." A little while earlier, I was listening to Radiohead singing something. I've forgotten the few words that I was able to make out. . . but I liked it.

Mostly (aside from my noise) it's been pretty quiet around here today . . . and that's probably as it should be here in the priory which everybody calls the monastery.

So now I'm typing away on this clackety tiny iMac keyboard which always gets me to the wrong key, but which is literally my bridge to the planet. Earlier, I walked ... ran ... walked ... ran ... walked ... ran ... walked ... ran ...walked ... ran ... walked ... ran around the track while a mob of boys in black on skateboards took turns flying off the concrete steps over by the school, daring each other mocking each other laughing all out and open wild about gravity and the risk and the motion.

This morning I got Dominic to O'Hare in time for United Airlines to shoot him off to Ohio for the weekend. Tomorrow morning I'm off in the white car (still white from that other weekend's back-busting wash) downstate to visit some people I love.

If you are reading this in time, I hope your weekend also has some love in it.