Winston in the barn. He does it well

 November 24, 2008 – Looking forward to a quiet few days of blogging, reading, thinking, time with dogs, writing, photo taking. Six years ago, I left my life in New Jersey behind and came to the country. It has been an amazing experience, beautiful, awful, challenging, uplifting, difficult, and full of joy and growth and pain. Life itself.
  I go in and out of periods with thinkers I love – Churchill, Lincoln, Hannah Arendt, E.B. White, and Thomas Merton, perhaps most of all. I am deep in a Merton period.

  “The thing to do when you have made a mistake is not to give up doing what you were doing and start doing something altogether new, but to start over again with the thing you began badly and try, for the love of God, to do it well.”

  – The Sign of Jonas
 
  One of the things I love about Merton was his struggle with faith and certainty. Some think they knew what everyone else should always do, but Merton was never sure what he or anybody else ought to do, and this, to me, is true humility and the foundation of faith. I make so many mistakes I can’t keep track of them, but I believe, or try to believe that the answer to mistakes – as it often is with fear – is to simply start over again, and try and do it well, and honestly. I wish I could say that I always do that, but like Merton, the point is to try, not necessarily to always succeed. In this sense, I am a sinner, for sure. Others too, I’m certain.