"[S]he had come to respect the wisdom of the Benedictine vow of stability—which is, as Thomas Merton put it, a renunciation of the vain hope of finding the perfect monastery..."

"... and an embracing of the ordinariness of what you already have.... [She] convinced them that moving to a new place was not the way to build a new self, because you brought your problems with you. If you didn’t distract yourself with moving around, but stayed where you were and put down roots, you gave yourself a chance to grow."

From "Where the Small-Town American Dream Lives On/As America’s rural communities stagnate, what can we learn from one that hasn’t?" by Larissa MacFarquhar in The New Yorker.

"The Pope has arrived at the U.S. Capitol and met with House Speaker John Boehner."

Some of these breaking-news alerts I'm getting in my email are the height of banality.

ADDED: I'm going to catch hell for saying this, but shouldn't you wear white underpants with a white outfit?



That's a screen grab from the AP photo of Pope Francis shaking hands with John Boehner, the 5th photograph here.

The full text of the speech to Congress is there too, so feel free to discuss loftier topics. Excerpt:

A nation can be considered great when it defends liberty as Lincoln did, when it fosters a culture which enables people to "dream" of full rights for all their brothers and sisters, as Martin Luther King sought to do; when it strives for justice and the cause of the oppressed, as Dorothy Day did by her tireless work, the fruit of a faith which becomes dialogue and sows peace in the contemplative style of Thomas Merton.

In these remarks I have sought to present some of the richness of your cultural heritage, of the spirit of the American people. It is my desire that this spirit continue to develop and grow, so that as many young people as possible can inherit and dwell in a land which has inspired so many people to dream.

"Can you be a Catholic and practice Buddhism at the same time?"

So-called "religious pluralism":

[Barbara] Johnson’s depiction of her faith mirrors that even of some clergy, including famed Trappist monk Thomas Merton who embraced and deeply studied Buddhism before his death in the 1960s. More recently, two Episcopal priests — including a bishop — described themselves as followers of Christianity and other faiths, one of Zen Buddhism and one of Islam....

“This is so surreal because I was getting closer and closer to my faith,” she said of those who assail her for seeking Communion with her blended faith identities. “I had really integrated my Catholic identity into my larger identity as someone who is very influenced by Buddhist teachings.”...

“Wasn’t the doubting Thomas good because he was in dialogue with his faith? It’s not between me and other Catholics, it’s between me and God.”