I don’t need to tell anyone out there how discouraging and deflating the news is these days. All the more reason to learn how to stay ground, and not slip into the sinkhole of anger and fear

Meditation helps me, and my silent hour. And most of all, doing good keeps me strong and grounded.

Find a safe and quiet space for contemplation. Turn off all your machines and devices.

Let no one know where you are, and disconnect from the distracting and angry world.

Come and meet yourself. Silence is very powerful and very healing.

I am reading the Book Of Hours every morning for a few minutes and letting Thomas Merton do some of the work. My hour of silence is in the late afternoon.

Monday Hymn, The Book Of Hours, By Kathleen Geigan. The writing of Thomas Merton, in his journal.

Hymn For Monday:

A yellow flower(light and spirit)

Sings by itself

for nobody.

A golden spirit

(light and emptiness)

sings without a word

By itself.

Let on one tough this gentle sun

in whose dark eye

Someone is awake.

(No light, no gold, no name, no color

And no thought:

O, wide awake!)

A golden heaven

Sings by itself

A song to nobody.

Antiphon:

My worship is a blue sky and then ten thousand crickets in the deep way hay of the field. My vow is the silence under their song.

-Thomas Merton, The Book Of Hours.