Posts tagged birds

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Words the birds heard.


“Merton, a man of title, addressed a sermon to the birds saying, 

“Esteemed friends, birds of noble lineage, I have no message to you except this, “Be what you are: be birds!”  Thus you will be your own sermon to yourselves!”

But it is Merton the stranger who knew very well the full import of the birds’ gentle reprimand: 

“Even this is one sermon too many.”  


Or, perhaps more to the point, the validity of Mertons’ message rests in the hope that the words will point to that self that speaks in silence and hears only in silence its own secret name.”  James Finley, Merton’s Palace of Nowhere

My own sermon to myself?







…be what I am.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to words the birds heard.