Merton's Seven Storey Mountain to completion--so beautiful--a half-chapter or two of Marie-Dominique Philippe's Retracing Reality (which sentence by sentence requires hard thought and some knowledge of Hegel and Heidegger once he launches into metaphysics in earnest), a cursory dipping into Kathleen Norris' The Cloister Walk, a serious wrestling with Thomas Dubay's Faith and Certitude, and with my anger, and with my politics, and with my anger again. And a single, uneventful chapter on Descartes and skepticism from Hans Kung's mammoth theological history of philosophical ideas: Does God Exist? That's what. --A friend used to ask when she saw me, what're you reading?
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"Moreover, that-which-is is concretely in the act of being, it is. Being, however, is a certain formalization. Being per se does not exist. That is why, if metaphysical research begins with being, there is always a risk of idealizing it. In fact, inquiry would then begin with an idea of being" (94). --Marie Dominique Philippe***
