The Biggest Disease In North America Is

The Sky Is My Prayer, The Birds Are My Prayer, The Wind In The Trees Is My Prayer, For God Is All In All.

But It Certainly Is A Wonderful Thing To Wake Up Suddenly In The Solitude Of The Woods And Look Up At The Sky And See The Utter Nonsense Of Everything Including All The Solemn Stuff Given Out By Professional Asses About The Spiritual Life; And Simply To Burst Out Laughing, And Laugh And Laugh, With The Sky And The Trees Because God Is Not In Words, And Not In Systems, And Not In Liturgical Movements, And Not In "contemplation" With A Big "c," Or In Asceticism Or In Anything Like That, Not Even In The Apostolate.

In Louisville, At The Corner Of Fourth And Walnut, In The Center Of The Shopping District, I Was Suddenly Overwhelmed With The Realization That I Loved All Those People, That They Were Mine And I Theirs, That We Could Not Be Alien To One Another Even Though We Were Total Strangers.

There Is Not True Intimacy Between Souls Who Do Not Know How To Respect One Another's Solitude.

Thinking About Monastic Ideals Is Not The Same As Living Up To Them, But At Any Rate Such Thinking Has An Important Place In A Monk's Life, Because You Cannot Begin To Do Anything Unless You Have Some Idea What You Are Trying To Do.