Wild and raw. Front moving through early with substantial rain and stiff wind from north-northwest. One of those situations when the high temperature for the day occurs at six a.m. then drops all day. Ocean moving like a big white-capped river north to south. Watching gulls beating against the wind give up, turn and sweep quickly south. Intent irrelevant; weather trumps everything today. Brought in some wood in the dark before the rain, bay and oak we’ve culled from the back.  Will have a fire later to cut the chill, with something good to read.

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A day for reflection and contemplation, and fittingly, a brief discussion of Thomas Merton, my nightly reading matter (again) of late.  A Cistercian, or Trappist, monk, (b.1915-d.1968) Fr. Merton was an amazingly prolific writer throughout the fifties and sixties, while living as a contemplative at Gethsemane Monastery in rural Kentucky.  His autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, which recounted his early life, Columbia University days, conversion, and entry into the monastic life, was hugely popular, and set the stage for a nearly continuous barrage of books, poems, articles, essays, and reviews over the next twenty-seven years. A bohemian by nature, he was intensely Catholic, serving in his capacity as a priest in various roles in the Monastery, and also intensely catholic, which is to say commitedly ecumenical, open to a broad range of theology and philosophy.  He wrote about everything from mid-night fire watches in the monastery, to SAC bombers flying overhead, to treatises on the history of monasticism, (and some beautiful essays about the joys of living in the little hermitage he was grudgingly allowed on the grounds,) and it is fascinating to follow the arc of his thought that, while essentially removed from society, nevertheless brilliantly both mirrors and informs the exciting, promising, and tumultuous culture of the times.  It is a very gifted man’s very public (ironic, for a hermit) pursuit of Ultimate Reality that leaves no book unread, no theology unexamined, no stone unturned, while accepting that God is nowhere if not nearby, in the simpliest of tasks. Most tellingly, for me, anyway, is Merton’s clear assertion that doubt is the engine that drives this pursuit, and always will be; the beautiful paradox that states: in the absence of doubt, God is absent.

There is a tradition of Thoreau and Dickinson running through much of Merton’s work, and ultimately, a fairly hardy embrace of Zen Buddhism, which, if you read any of the other earlier Christian contemplatives– the Desert Fathers, St. John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila– seems to have been there all along. My more theologically learned friends warned me to not fall sway to the Christian mystics and contemplatives, and I am aware of the dangers, but in Merton, (who himself frequently confronted the seductive nature of solitude,) I find an honestly relevant synthesis of doubt and faith that, though born of solitude, is all about community.  Works for me.

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Forget the groundhog, the beach cactus says spring is just around the corner.  Feels a long way off today, though. Went down to the beach when the rain let up to feel the wind and stood facing it with a mixed flock of gulls. Flying is pointless, just wait it out. Sea running five to seven feet; wind scouring out even the pock-marks of rain in the sand and the tracks of birds. We have always been beach people, that is, fond of going to the beach, but we never realized, until living here, what a long-term harsh environment it is.  Like most folks, we naturally didn’t go to the beach if the weather was inclement. Living not only through the weather, good and bad, but the climate– weather over time– has forged a whole new respect, a better understanding of the big sweep of things, and our itty-bitty place in it. The ocean rules, man. It’s presence keeps us warmer in winter and cooler in summer than the mainland, and when the wind blows off it, we’re the first thing it hits. Weather generally moves west to east here, but we can get squalls in off the Atlantic in summer, and it’s always a treat to watch rain coming or going on the water, and in late summer there are the fantastic light shows of thunderstorms fifty miles out.

Today is its own magic. We treasure the calm, blue, sunny days, and we grouse when February drags on cool and gray like this, but we’ve learned to shrink our expectations, and like the birds, either go with the prevailing wind, or hunker down and face into it.