“Walking through one of the buildings where I hadn’t been before, I came across a reproduction of Hazard Durfee’s beautiful flute player with the text by Henry David Thoreau: ‘Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.’ It is quite understandable why one of the books on Thomas Merton is called ‘A Different Drummer’, and the longer I look at the quiet concentrated face of Durfee’s flutist, the more I realize that the contemplative life is like hearing a different drummer.”

(#HenriNouwen THE GENESEE DIARY www.henrinouwen.org

Henry D Thoreau, Walden and Other Writings, The Modern Library (New York: Random House, 1950), p. 290)

(Lumix GX85; King’s Creek Meadow at Lassen Volcanic National Park, August 2017)