‘In the afternoon lots of pretty little myrtle warblers  were playing and diving for insects in the low pine branches over my head, so close I could almost touch them.  I was awed at their loveliness, their quick flight, their hissings and chirpings, the yellow spot on the back revealed in flight, etc.  Sense of total kinship with them as if they and I were of the same nature,  and as if that nature were nothing but love.  And what else but love keeps us all together in being?’

From Thomas Merton’s Journal. 

 I sometimes feel a little bit like that too.  But their devouring the insects made me think of Darwin’s anguishing over the devouring and exterminating and cruelty of nature, especially his horror at the ichneumon fly laying its eggs inside a caterpillar so when they hatch they can devour the caterpillar from the inside.  Yet the myrtle warblers were so beautiful and I rejoice with Merton at such wonders. What a puzzle it all is.

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