The full blossoming of spring in May ushers in the wonderful “assault” of all creatures of Earth upon our human senses … so hungry to be touched and stirred up.Consider how Thomas Merton expresses a bit of this in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (p.131-132) .The first chirps of the waking birds mark the “point vierge” (“the virgin point”) of the dawn under a sky as yet without real light, a moment of awe and inexpressible innocence, when (God) in perfect silence opens their eyes. They begin to speak to (God), not with fluent song, but with an awakening question that is their dawn state …if it is time for them to ‘be.’ (God) answers, ‘Yes.’ Then, they one by one wake up and become birds … beginning to sing. Presently they will be fully themselves, and will even fly. … Here is an unspeakable secret: paradise is all around us and we do not understand. It is wide open. …but we do not know it: we are off “one to his farm and another to (her) merchandise.’ Lights on. Clocks ticking. ... Stoves cooking. Electric shavers filling radios with static. “Wisdom,’ cries the dawn deacon, but we do not attend.