A beautiful day. We rise early. I head out into the rain and collect coffee and pastries.

Later, as the sun comes out, we go walking until late into the afternoon.

After Mass, we listen to the sounds of birds and traffic, and settle down for a quiet evening. I read this in Thomas Merton’s journals:

“‘Solitude’ becomes for me less and less of a specialty, and simply ‘life’ itself. I do not seek to ‘be a solitary’ or anything else, for ‘being anything’ is a distraction. It is enough to be, in an ordinary human mode, with only hunger and sleep, one’s cold and warmth, rising and going to bed. Putting on blankets and taking them off (two last night. It is cold for June!). Making coffee and drinking it. Defrosting the refrigerator, reading, meditation, working, praying. I live as my fathers have lived on this earth, until eventually I die. Amen. There is no need to make an assertion of my life, especially to assert it is MINE, though it is doubtless not somebody else’s. I must learn to gradually forget program and artifice. I know this, at least in my mind, and want it in my heart, but my other habits of awareness remain strong.”

— Thomas Merton, Journal, 22 June 1965