Thomas Merton on October

I love October. It is my favorite time of year. I always loved the start of school and all of the promises of a new year of learning. I loved being huddled under wool blankets while the football team battled it out on the field. I loved band music, hot dogs, and hot chocolate. I still love the smell of autumn; it marks the inexorable move from long summer days to cold long winter nights. Crisp air. Pumpkins. Sweet children turned into goblins and ninja and heroes of space battles not yet fought. I don't know why autumn brings such a strong sense of anticipation. After all, it moves us not into a season of growth and newness, but into a fallow season, the time when things die in order to make room for new birth another time.

Here is a quote from Thomas Merton, that great saint who spoke truth, but more importantly, who lived truth, who sought love and oneness with God with every breath and was honest enough to say that he didn't always find it.

"October is a fine and dangerous season in America. a wonderful time to begin anything at all. You go to college, and every course in the catalogue looks wonderful."

Isn't that a wonderful thing - to feast upon the offering of knowledge and life and for all of it to look wonderful? In these days of divisive partisanship, of teens taking their own lives, of faltering peace talks, of never ending wars, there is something beautiful in this image.