Prayer by Thomas Merton

My Lord God
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following
your will does not mean
that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that my desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope that I have that desire
in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything
apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this
you will lead me by the right road
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always
though I may seem to be lost
and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear,
for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me
to face my perils alone.

- Thomas Merton (1915-1968), from Thoughts in Solitude

Personal pronouns and adjectives are a fruitful nuisance in this language, and should have been left out. For instance, the same sound, SIE, means YOU, and it means SHE, and it means HER, and it means IT, and it means THEY, and it means THEM. Think of the ragged poverty of a language which has to make one word do the work of six–and a poor little weak thing of only three letters at that. But mainly, think of the exasperation of never knowing which of these meanings the speaker is trying to convey. This explains why, whenever a person says SIE to me, I generally try to kill him, if a stranger.

if i’m going to be serious about this graduate school stuff i’m going to have to suck it up and take some german classess, and i’m going to have to get my application into the jackson school as well. it’s now august, and i have four months to get things resolved. oh that i had undertaken all this back in june.

graduate school to-do list:

• tuition-exempt 2nd year german fall, winter, spring
• gre test, i suppose
• application for the comparative religion program, jackson school
• buckle down and take 3rd year german next summer
• start grad school in fall of 2006, tuition exempt
• pick another language and get 1st year reading comprehension in it – japanese again perhaps?
• have a masters in comparative religion in 2009.

that’s not all that bad, but i need to do it if it’s going to happen.