“Holy” by Allen Ginsberg tagged posts

Notes From a Walk in the Park

“Everything that is, is holy,” wrote the renowned monk-in-the-world, Thomas Merton, everyone’s favorite chatty Trappist. (Fortunately, after he took the order’s traditional vow of silence, no one could shut the man up over the 80 or so books and thousands of letters and journal jottings that subsequently came out under his name.)

I was put in mind of that phrase on a hike through the park midway through this fine Friday afternoon, the kind of luxury I have mostly denied myself over these working years, a denial that Merton very likely would have chastised me for.

Out in ridiculously unseasonal 70-degree weather under soft breezes and shifting, wispy clouds, it is easy to think that humankind was made to be outdoors, breathing deeply and letting thoughts emerge and waft along as they will.

Sure, we need shelter from the elements when the night turns cold or the days nasty, but at base, it is a rare...

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