Day Three

Slow day. We drove around for a few minutes this morning. Looking at the handful of shops on the island. Kelly saw an interesting antique shop so we pulled in the driveway. The lady ran out to our car and let us know we weren’t supposed to pull in the driveway. Please park out front. We smiled and then left. Lord have mercy on us and her.

After a late lunch, we headed out for the beach by 3:00 pm. Needless to say we’re not on any tight schedule. Two minutes at the beach and I was snoring. That walk was exhausting!

I finally got a chance to read for a few minutes and reread “Rain and Rhinoceros” from Thomas Merton’s little book Raids on the Unspeakable. This delightful little existentialist essay explores our society’s tendency to commodify everything, and the challenge of becoming an authentic person in the midst of inhuman pressures of our culture. I might want to clarify Merton’s point that culture is the source of plastic selves by focusing more on the darkness of our own human heart, but he makes that clarification in other essays. Anyway, reading this essay reminded me of the important of natural wonders that surround us yet we fail to see because of all our techno-gadgets—like this compute I’m typing on. Listen in to Merton as he discusses the rain:

The rain I am in is not like the rain of cities. It fills the woods with an immense and confused sound. It covers the flat roof of the cabin and its porch with insistent and controlled rhythms. And I listen, because it reminds me again and again that the whole world runs by rhythms I have not yet learned to recognize, rhythms that are not those of an engineer.
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What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, th emost comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows!

Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as it wants, this rain. As long as it talks, I am going to listen.

Merton contrasts this world of simple beauty with the manufactured world of the city. He points out that the city comes to believe the lie that only that which is manufactured and bought and sold is real. In a culture of constant strain for the next best thing, I fear this is all too true. These poignant words arrest my attention and help me to focus on the simple beauty of the present moment.

Crashing and thrashing waves
pound and crown the shore.
Peaceful sounds of chaos
crush and rush over
still sands soaked and shaped
by constant colliding waters.
Above this gushing flood,
fizzing foam floats
along the swirling surface.
In this churning and turning
the yearning heart finds
an acquaintance:
both moving in rhythm
to another force.