No Horses

Mar 16, 2026

An excerpt from a letter to a poet-

My Friend,

Have I not you about the time that Simone Weil visited Thomas Merton’s hermitage at the Abbey of Gethsemani in the summer of 1942? Shame on me.

Well, buckle up, dear friend, because it was an affair of the utmost seriousness.

--

Knock knock…

“Thomas, I need your help immediately. I must parachute over Vichy to deliver care to the wounded French at the front. It is necessary.”

“Apologies, Madame, who are you?”

Simone pushed past the gentle monk, through the entry of his cinderblock den. She was a stick figure in corduroys. Thomas’ cabin (or “dwelling,” as one could only dwell there) was decorated sparsely with a crucifix fixed at the center of an accidental horizon on the wall. “Yes, we will need this,” Simone noted, as she took it down. “Is there nowhere to sit?

Thomas’ eyes rolled, “Please Madame, by all means, sit in the chair.”

She held the cross like a kitten and instructed, “No, Thomas, you sit. You must convince your president to convince Churchill. You are French, no?” She lurched over him like a weeping willow. “Is there a telephone?

“Yes, in the abbot’s office—Madame, we have strict observance of our rules here, and of our schedule. I must be on my way.”

With a sigh, she handed him the cross and marched to the kitchen. “You will need convincing,” she said as she filled a copper kettle for tea.

The Abbey of Gethsemani was a solitary place and did, indeed, require strict observance of the schedule. Ora et labora, pray and work. But the performance of discipline is among the ordinary vices we must resist in order to enjoy a visit from an angel.

Oh heavens, Thomas thought, must I really be on my way? How delightful to be hosted in my own home...“Yes, Madame, I will call him immediately, but first you must give me the details, down to the very minutia, no matter how trivial. Your name?”

“I am Simone, of Free France.”

“And your medical experience?”

“None, I will assemble a team.”

“Of course, and when will your team be ready?”

“Time is of the essence.”

“Very well,” Thomas agreed. “Will you stay for lunch?”

”Yes.”

It took Simone two hours to make sandwiches, but it was enough time to brief Thomas on their mission. Dates. Times. Coordinates. “No weapons. They will have to shoot pacifists—” She interrupted herself, "Thomas! I’m impressed that you can remember all this without taking notes.”

Thomas glowed. The old boy had developed a crush! “Well, you know, Madame,” he yammered, “the contemplative life allows for certain... ummm.... freedoms to cultivate the mind—WAIT…shoot!? Shoot who? Are you the pacifist?”

“No, I’m not a pacifist, but they don’t know that.”

“SIMONE NO!! Let’s just hold our horses for a second.”

“No horses,” she said with a nod, and handed him a cabbage and onion sandwich on a dish towel. “Thomas, I came to you because you are precisely who you believe yourself to be. You do not make sentimental compromises.”

Thomas stood there silently, like a red eyed boy clasping the cross to his chest, weeping under a weeping willow. Everyone was crying. Sobbing uncontrollably. Shrieking in terror. Worldwide. “No horses,” he mumbled.

Simone thanked him on behalf of the Free French. “Eat first. And then please make the call.” She took the cross from his grasp and bid him adieu.

Thomas followed the angel out of his cabin, into the yard, but she was gone. He kneeled to lay the sandwich in the grass for the robins to pick at. “Merci,” he whispered, as he drew the sign of the cross, forehead to chest, shoulder to shoulder, and with a deep breath in the nostrils and out the mouth, he sprinted, left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, to the abbot’s office. He had a call to make.