Thoughts while wondering why the pool temperature never changes between 90-94 when the air temperatures never deviate between 86 and 110….

* If you want to live next to The Great White Shank there’s a heckuva deal next door (our house would be just to the left in the picture) at $242,600…

* I’m reading for the second time (the first was over a decade ago) Thomas Merton’s “The Seven Story Mountain”, and in doing so I’m convinced that the seeds of my own journey to Roman Catholicism was planted in my first reading many years ago. I can’t help but wondering… following my own conversion experience in 1994, why Merton? Why Henri Nouwen? Why St. John of the Cross? Sometimes the journey you think is so straight is not quite that way. And it’s only time and distance that reveals the road you have been traveling all along.

* The air is so still and the breeze so incredibly warm; it seems as if I’m the only person alive on this block – although I know there are people that live around us. There’s a bit of lightning in the distance – very cool; there’s something so humbling and surreal about the silence of the lightning when the only sound around is the peaceful lapping of water against the side of the pool.

* As much as this is a pleasant experience, deep down I know I don’t belong here. Perhaps its a defect in my own physical and mental being, but I have never – and probably will never – feel connected in any way to a place I live. I mean, think of it – as much as a New Englander as I am and will always be, I’ve left it behind twice – and willingly. Why is that? I know this – this place in Arizona will never feel like home to me. But then again, do I even have a home?

* I still remember shortly after my conversion experience picking up Henri Nouwen’s “The Genesee Diary” at the Burlington Mall Lauriat’s bookstore. I don’t even remember why that book, but I can tell you this – it made an incredible mark on me, and it was from that, that I was led to Thomas Merton and St. John of the Cross. There are few books in my life that have had the same kind of impact on me as “The Genesee Diary”, and if you’ve never read it I cannot recommend it enough. It will change your life.

* Which makes me think – is being a Christian all about understanding the woundedness not just in you but in the world around you? Maybe that’s why Nouwen’s writings were always so intimate and powerful. He certainly wasn’t afraid to let his readers know when and how his soul was hurting. Maybe we all need a little more of that. A little humilty in this life goes a long way…