the snow is melting after only one day and i am thinking of thomas merton sitting so long ago and not many miles from here receiving news that his younger brother was gone from this world, shot down over the north sea. he was a pilot in the royal canadian airforce in the 2nd world war. merton had the bravery to talk about that war as the inevitable result of the world he helped to create. it would have been so easy to identify the evil of hitler, or of the nazi's. instead he saw the evil in himself. kentucky seems to be a million miles away from the deserts of iraq, but in the melting snow i see my complicity with the powers of this world. there is a dinginess to it. forgive us.