A Deep Sense of Peace – A Reflection

Denise and I went for a walk with our cameras on Saturday. It had been quite some time since we had done something like that. It was a true joy to slow down and enjoy the beauty of the Weeks Bay Pitcher Plant Bog. The name (bog) doesn’t do justice to the beauty of that place. Below is a picture of one of the pitcher plants we saw growing there.

The quote from the book A Year with Thomas Merton: Daily Meditations from His Journals spoke to my heart this evening as I remembered our delightful ramble on Saturday.

I got up to the hermitage about nightfall. Wonderful silence, saying Compline gently and slowly with a candle burning before the icon of our Lady. A deep sense of peace and truth, that this was the way things are supposed to be, that I was in my right mind for a change (around the community I am seldom in my right mind). — October 13, 1964 (Dancing in the Waters of Life: The Journals of Thomas Merton, vol 5, 1963-1965)

As we wandered about with our cameras, we both realized that such experiences are life-giving for us. Like Merton said, a deep sense of peace and truth… the way things are supposed to be. We need more of that in our own hectic and busy lives and I believe that it is essential to staying engaged in a meaning-filled way with the church and ministry here in South Alabama.