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All through the years, I, I never did prayers much in advance—
sometimes the night before, the day before if I thought the morning was going to be very complicated
and that I wasn’t going to have time to enter into the quiet time I needed to, to write the prayer.
So I, I got—on the 11th I got back to my apartment,
and I live alone and I was still caught in all my feelings.
I think I might have called my family or a little bit more of course
saw some things on television and didn’t want to get too much more caught up in it other than—
anyway, then I decided, well I better write some things down,
try to get some grasp on this because there’s so many feelings—
a whirlwind of feelings, and I didn’t want to be blinded by that, I knew what was needed,
at least in my perspective was some grounding, upon which—
that was always my people could say amen to—grounding of some stability,
some strength and for me, that was some kind of witness of faith.
So I, I started writing down and I think mostly started writing feelings.
And I well, often as I would, hope any of us would, you turn to good friends in time of need.
And I turned to a book—I have a collection of books of Thomas Merton—
Trappist monk, poet, and very involved in social issues, even from his cloister—
what a great writer. Pulled up one of his books called Seeds of Contemplation, and I,
I turned to a couple of pages, what I thought it was an echo of what I was feeling about and,
and so there was one title that was called “Peace,”
and I’ll just read the first couple of lines, if I may.
“If people really wanted peace, they would sincerely ask God for it and He would give it to them.
But why should He give the world peace, which is not really desired?
The peace the world pretends to desire is really no peace at all.
To some people, peace merely means the liberty to exploit others,
without fear of retaliation of interference. To others, peace means freedom.
To still others, it means leisure. To others it—”
I took the book and I threw it across the room.
Because I thought it was peace that we were looking for,
and he was negating all the motivations and all the feelings that generate anything but peace.
So I, I said, I think I have to sleep on this.
As I said, I get up very early in the morning
and I was still kind of like in a logjam in mind and prayer and then finally,
words from the Old Testament, from the Psalms, came to my mind.
They’re the two lines that Trappist monk—that Thomas Merton is—every prayer begins with these two lines,
and they’re asking God to be with them as they begin their prayer.
“Our help is in the name of the Lord. Lord make haste to help us.”
And once I got that on paper, I—it just flowed.