Journal Entry – December 9, 1962

“Hurt my hand falling on a sharp stone in the garden (in the dark) on the way to Prime. Moral: don’t be looking at the stars on the way to Prime.

It is beautiful Advent weather, grayish and cold, with clouds of light snow howling across the valley, and I see it is really winter. I put some bread out for the birds.

Twenty-one years tomorrow since I landed here! I feel closer to my beginning than ever, yet perhaps I am near my end. The Advent hymns sound as they first did, as if they were the nearest things to me that ever were, as if they had been decisive in shaping my heart and my life, as if I had received their form, as if there could never be any other melodies so deeply connatural to me. They are myself, words and melody and everything...”

~Thomas Merton