Here is a journal entry from the late Thomas Merton, a monk that lived his last days as a hermit. I adore this man. His journal entries crack me up and move me at the same time.
Yesterday Father Cellarer lent me the Jeep. I did not ask for it, he just lent it to me out of the goodness of his heart, so that I would be able to go over on the far side of the knobs. I had never driven a car before... Yesterday I took the Jeep and started off gaily all by myself in the woods. It has been raining heavily. All the roads were deep in mud. It took me some time to discover the front-wheel drive. I skidded into the ditches and got out again, I went through creeks, I got stuck in the mud, I bumped into trees and once, when I was on the main road, I stalled trying to get out of the front-wheel drive and ended up sideways in the middle of the road with a car coming down the hill straight at me. Thank heaven I am still alive. At the moment I didn't seem to care if I lived or died. I drove the Jeep madly into the forest in a happy, rosy fog of confusion and delight. We romped over trestles and I said, "O Mary, I love you," as I went splashing through puddles a foot deep, rushing madly into the underbrush and back out again.
Finally I got the thing back to the monastery covered with mud from stern to stern. I stood in choir at Vespers dizzy with the thought, "I have been driving a Jeep."
Thomas Merton. Entering the Silence, Journals Volume 1. Jonathan Montaldo, editor (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997): 387.
Thought for the Day
Father Cellarer just made me a sign that I must never, never, under any circumstances, take the Jeep out again.
Entering the Silence: 388.
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