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Some Of Us Need To Discover That We Will Not Begin To Live More Fully Until We Have The Courage To Do And See And Taste And Experience Much Less Than Usual... And For A Man Who Has Let Himself Be Drawn Completely Out Of Himself By His Activity, Nothing Is More Difficult Than To Sit Still And Rest, Doing Nothing At All. The Very Act Of Resting Is The Hardest And Most Courageous Act He Can Perform.

-Thomas Merton

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Some Of Us Need

Thomas Merton

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Some Of Us Need To Discover That We Will Not Begin To Live More Fully Until We Have The Courage To Do And See And Taste And Experience Much Less Than Usual... And For A Man Who Has Let Himself Be Drawn Completely Out Of Himself By His Activity, Nothing Is More Difficult Than To Sit Still And Rest, Doing Nothing At All. The Very Act Of Resting Is The Hardest And Most Courageous Act He Can Perform.

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Hurry Ruins Saints As Well As Artists.

In All His Acts God Orders All Things, Whether Good Or Evil, For The Good Of Those Who Know Him And Seek Him And Who Strive To Bring Their Own Freedom Under Obedience To His Divine Purpose. All That Is Done By The Will Of God In Secret Is Done For His Glory And For The Good Of Those Whom He Has Chosen To Share In His Glory.

A Happiness That Is Sought For Ourselves Alone Can Never Be Found: For A Happiness That Is Diminished By Being Shared Is Not Big Enough To Make Us Happy.

Prayer Is An Expression Of Who We Are...we Are A Living Incompleteness. We Are A Gap, An Emptiness That Calls For Fulfillment.

To Some Men Peace Merely Means The Liberty To Exploit Other People Without Fear Of Retaliation Or Interference. To Others Peace Means The Freedom To Rob Others Without Interruption. To Still Others It Means The Leisure To Devour The Goods Of The Earth Without Being Compelled To Interrupt Their Pleasures To Feed Those Whom Their Greed Is Starving. And To Practically Everybody Peace Simply Means The Absence Of Any Physical Violence That Might Cast A Shadow Over Lives Devoted To The Satisfaction Of Their Animal Appetites For Comfort And Pleasure.

What Can We Gain By Sailing To The Moon If We Cannot Cross The Abyss That Separates Us From Ourselves?

Violence Is Essentially Wordless. And It Can Begin Only Where Thought And Rational Communication Have Broken Down.

What A Thing It Is To Sit Absolutely Alone, In The Forest, At Night, Cherished By This Wonderful, Unintelligible, Perfectly Innocent Speech, The Most Comforting Speech In The World, The Talk That Rain Makes By Itself All Over The Ridges, And The Talk Of The Watercourses Everywhere In The Hollows! Nobody Started It, Nobody Is Going To Stop It. It Will Talk As Long As It Wants This Rain. As Long As It Talks I Am Going To Listen.

We Must Suffer. Our Five Sense Are Dulled By Inordinate Pleasure. Penance Makes Them Keen, Gives Them Back Their Natural Vitality, And More. Penance Clears The Eye Of Conscience And Of Reason. It Helps Think Clearly, Judge Sanely. It Strengthens The Action Of Our Will.

A Bad Book About The Love Of God Remains A Bad Book.

Fear Narrows The Little Entrance Of Our Heart. It Shrinks Up Our Capacity To Love. It Freezes Up Our Power To Give Ourselves.

Capacity To Love

We Are Obliged To Love One Another. We Are Not Strictly Bound To 'like' One Another. Love Governs The Will: 'liking' Is A Matter Of Sense And Sensibility. Nevertheless, If We Really Love Others It Will Not Be Too Hard To Like Them Also.

Love One Another

I Myself Am Part Of The Weather And Part Of The Climate And Part Of The Place … It Is Certainly Part Of My Life Of Prayer.

The Land Which Thou Goest To Possess Is Not Like The Land Of Egypt From Whence Thou Camest Out... For My Thoughts Are Not Your Thoughts, Nor Your Ways My Ways, Saith The Lord...seek The Lord While He May Be Found, Call Upon Him While He Is Near...why Do You Spend Money For That Which Is Not Bread And Your Labor For That Which Doth Not Satisfy You?

The Degradation Of The Sense Of Symbol In Modern Society Is One Of Its Many Signs Of Spiritual Decay.

Ash Wednesday Is Full Of Joy...the Source Of All Sorrow Is The Illusion That Of Ourselves We Are Anything But Dust.

True Contemplation Is Not A Psychological Trick But A Theological Grace. It Can Come To Us Only As A Gift, And Not As A Result Of Our Own Clever Use Of Spiritual Techniques.

It Is The Will Of God That We Live Not Only As Rational Beings, But As "new Men" Regenerated By The Holy Spirit In Christ. It Is His Will That We Reach Out For Our Inheritance, That We Answer His Call To Be His Sons. We Are Born Men Without Our Consent, But The Consent To Be Sons Of God Has To Be Elicited By Our Own Free Will.

To Consider Persons And Events And Situations Only In The Light Of Their Effect On Me Is To Live On The Doorstep Of Hell. Selfishness Is Doomed To Frustration Centered As It Is Upon A Lie. To Live Exclusively For Myself, I Must Make All Things Bend Themselves To My Will As If I Were A God.

Ours Is A Time Of Anxiety Because We Have Willed It To Be So. Our Anxiety Is Not Imposed On Us By Force From Outside. We Impose It On Our World And Upon One Another From Within Ourselves.

Yet It Is In This Loneliness That The Deepest Activities Begin. It Is Here That You Discover Act Without Motion, Labor That Is Profound Repose, Vision In Obscurity, And, Beyond All Desire, A Fulfillment Whose Limits Extend To Infinity.

The Man Of Faith Who Has Never Experienced Doubt Is Not A Man Of Faith.

There Is In All Visible Things An Invisible Fecundity, A Dimmed Light, A Meek Namelessness, A Hidden Wholeness.

The Beginning Of Love Is To Let Those We Love Be Perfectly Themselves, And Not To Twist Them To Fit Our Own Image. Otherwise We Love Only The Reflection Of Ourselves We Find In Them.

Inspirational Love

Souls Are Like Athletes, That Need Opponents Worthy Of Them, If They Are To Be Tried And Extended And Pushed To The Full Use Of Their Powers, And Rewarded According To Their Capacity.

Everybody Has An Instinctive Desire To Do Good Things And Avoid Evil. But That Desire Is Sterile As Long As We Have No Experience Of What It Means To Be Good.

God Must Be Allowed The Right To Speak Unpredictably.... We Must Find Him In Our Enemy, Or We May Lose Him Even In Our Friend. We Must Find Him In The Pagan Or We Will Lose Him In Our Own Selves, Substituting For His Living Presence An Empty Abstraction.

Day After Day I Read Freud, Thinking Myself To Be Very Enlightened And Scientific When, As A Matter Of Fact, I Was About As Scientific As An Old Woman Secretly Poring Over Books About Occultism, Trying To Tell Her Own Fortune, And Learning How To Dope Out The Future Form The Lines In The Palm Of Her Hand. I Don't Know If I Ever Got Very Close To Needing A Padded Cell: But If I Ever Had Gone Crazy, I Think Psychoanalysis Would Have Been The One Thing Chiefly Responsible For It.

Life Is This Simple: We Are Living In A World That Is Absolutely Transparent And The Divine Is Shining Through It All The Time. This Is Not Just A Nice Story Or A Fable, It Is True.

It Is Almost Impossible To Overestimate The Value Of True Humility And Its Power In The Spiritual Life. For The Beginning Of Humility Is The Beginning Of Blessedness And The Consummation Of Humility Is The Perfection Of All Joy. Humility Contains In Itself The Answer To All The Great Problems Of The Life Of The Soul. It Is The Only Key To Faith, With Which The Spiritual Life Begins: For Faith And Humility Are Inseparable. In Perfect Humility All Selfishness Disappears And Your Soul No Longer Lives For Itself Or In Itself For God: And It Is Lost And Submerged In Him And Transformed Into Him.

Prayer And Love Are Really Learned In The Hour When Prayer Becomes Impossible And Your Heart Turns To Stone.

O Love-why Can't You Leave Me Alone? Which Is A Rhetorical Question Meaning: For Heaven's Sake, Don't.

The True Inner Self Must Be Drawn Up Like A Jewel From The Bottom Of The Sea, Rescued From Confusion, From Indistinction, From Immersion In The Common, The Nondescript, The Trivial, The Sordid, The Evanescent.

To Be Grateful Is To Recognize The Love Of God In Everything He Has Given Us - And He Has Given Us Everything. Every Breath We Draw Is A Gift Of His Love, Every Moment Of Existence Is A Grace, For It Brings With It Immense Graces From Him. Gratitude Therefore Takes Nothing For Granted, Is Never Unresponsive, Is Constantly Awakening To New Wonder And To Praise Of The Goodness Of God. For The Grateful Person Knows That God Is Good, Not By Hearsay But By Experience. And That Is What Makes All The Difference.

The Greatest Temptations Are Not Those That Solicit Our Consent To Obvious Sin, But Those That Offer Us Great Evils Masking As The Greatest Goods.

One Opens The Inner Doors Of One's Heart To The Infinite Silences Of The Spirit, Out Of Whose Abysses Love Wells Up Without Fail And Gives Itself To All.

I Stand Among You As One Who Offers A Small Message Of Hope. . . There Are Always People Who Dare To Seek On The Margin Of Society, Who Are Not Dependent On Social Acceptance, Not Dependent On Social Routine, And Prefer A Kind Of Free-floating Existence Under A State Of Risk.

When We Are Alone On A Starlit Night, When By Chance We See The Migrating Birds In Autumn Descending On A Grove Of Junipers To Rest And Eat; When We See Children In A Moment When They Are Really Children, When We Know Love In Our Own Hearts; Or When, Like The Japanese Poet, Basho, We Hear An Old Frog Land In A Quiet Pond With A Solitary Splash - At Such Times The Awakening, The Turning Inside Out Of All Values, The "newness," The Emptiness And The Purity Of Vision That Make Themselves Evident, All These Provide A Glimpse Of The Cosmic Dance.

In Humility Is The Greatest Freedom. As Long As You Have To Defend The Imaginary Self That You Think Is Important, You Lose Your Peace Of Heart.

The Closer We Are To God, The Closer We Are To Those Who Are Close To Him.

In Meditative Prayer, One Thinks And Speaks Not Only With The Mind And Lips, But In A Certain Sense With One's Whole Being... All Good Meditative Prayer Is A Conversation Of Our Entire Self To God.

It Is Easy Enough To Tell The Poor To Accept Their Poverty As Gods Will When You Yourself Have Warm Clothes And Plenty Of Food And Medical Care And A Roof Over Your Head And No Worry About The Rent. But If You Want Them To Believe Youtry To Share Some Of Their Poverty And See If You Can Accept It As Gods Will Yourself!

Roof Over Your Head

It Seems To Me That The Darkness That Has Troubled You ... Comes From One Very Serious Source. Without Wanting To Be In Conflict With The Truth And With The Will Of God, We Are Actually Going Against God's Will And His Teaching.

Life Reveals Itself To Us Only In So Far As Well Live It.

I Refuse To Be Misled By Any Kind Of A Mirage About Any Alleged Success Of What I Write. Those Things Are Too Easily Exaggerated, And Even When They Are True, They Always Mean Less Than They Seem To.

One Has To Be Alone, Under The Sky, Before Everything Falls Into Place And One Finds His Or Her Own Place In The Midst Of It All. We Have To Have The Humility To Realize Ourselves As Part Of Nature.

Business Is Not The Supreme Virtue, And Sanctity Is Not Measured By The Amount Of Work We Accomplish. Perfection Is Found In The Purity Of Our Love For God, And This Pure Love Is A Delicate Plant That Grows Best Where There Is Plenty Of Time For It To Mature

If It So Happened That I Had Once Written A Best-seller, This Was A Pure Accident, Due To Inattention And Naivete, And I Would Take Very Good Care Never To Do The Same Again. If I Had A Message For My Contemporaries, I Said, It Was Surely This: Be Anything You Like, Be Madmen, Drunks, And Bastards Of Every Shape And Form, But At All Costs Avoid One Thing: Success.

Let No One Hope To Find In Contemplation An Escape From Conflict, From Anguish Or From Doubt. On The Contrary, The Deep Inexpressible Certitude Of The Contemplative Experience Awakens A Tragic Anguish And Opens Many Questions In The Depths Of The Heart Like Wounds That Cannot Stop Bleeding.

What Does It Mean To Know And Experience My Own “nothingness?” It Is Not Enough To Turn Away In Disgust From My Illusions And Faults And Mistakes, To Separate Myself From Them As If They Were Not, And As If I Were Someone Other Than Myself. This Kind Of Self-annihilati On Is Only A Worse Illusion, It Is A Pretended Humility Which, By Saying “i Am Nothing” I Mean In Effect “i Wish I Were Not What I Am.

The Only Trouble Is That In The Spiritual Life There Are No Tricks And No Shortcuts. Those Who Imagine That They Can Discover Spiritual Gimmicks And Put Them To Work For Themselves Usually Ignore God's Will And His Grace.

The Modern Child May Early In His Or Her Existence Have Natural Inclinations Toward Spirituality. The Child May Have Imagination, Originality, A Simple And Individual Response To Reality, And Even A Tendency To Moments Of Thoughtful Silence And Absorption. All These Tendencies, However, Are Soon Destroyed By The Dominant Culture. The Child Becomes A Yelling, Brash, False Little Monster, Brandishing A Toy Gun Or Dressed Up Like Some Character He Has Seen On Television.

Humility Sets Us Free To Do What Is Really Good, By Showing Us Our Illusions And Withdrawing Our Will From What Was Only An Apparent Good.

To Allow Oneself To Be Carried Away By A Multitude Of Conflicting Concerns, To Surrender To Too Many Demands, To Commit Oneself To Too Many Projects, To Want To Help Everyone In Everything, Is To Succumb To The Violence Of Our Times.

I Seek To Speak To You, In Some Way, As Your Own Self. Who Can Tell What This May Meani Myself Do Not Know, But If You Listen, Things Will Be Said That Are Perhaps Not Written In This Book. And This Will Be Due Not To Me But To The One Who Lives And Speaks In Both.

When We Are Strong, We Are Always Much Greater Than The Things That Happen To Us.

I Have Only One Desire, And That Is The Desire For Solitude-to Disappear Into God, To Be Submerged In His Peace, To Be Lost In The Secret Of His Face.

Not Only Does Silence Give Us A Chance To Understand Ourselves Better, To Get A Truer And More Balanced Perspective On Our Own Lives In Relation To The Lives Of Others: Silence Makes Us Whole If We Let It. Silence Helps Draw Together The Scattered And Dissipated Energies Of A Fragmented Existence.

Here Is An Unspeakable Secret: Paradise Is All Around Us And We Do Not Understand.

The Gate Of Heaven Is Everywhere.

Gates Of Heaven

Let Us Come Alive To The Splendor That Is All Around Us And See The Beauty In Ordinary Things.

Ordinary Things

The Beginning Of Love Is The Will To Let Those We Love Be Perfectly Themselves.

Unconditional Love

You Pray Best When The Mirror Of Your Soul Is Empty Of Every Image Except The Image Of The Invisible Father.

When You Expect The World To End At Any Moment, You Know There Is No Need To Hurry. You Take Your Time, You Do Your Work Well.

To Be Alone By Being Part Of The Universe-fitting In Completely To An Environment Of Woods And Silence And Peace. Everything You Do Becomes A Unity And A Prayer. Unity Within And Without.

A Gentle Sense Of Humor Will Be Alert To Detect Anything That Savors Of A Pious 'act' On The Part Of The Penitent.

For Perfect Hope Is Achieved On The Brink Of Despair, When Instead Of Falling Over The Edge, We Find Ourselves Walking On Air.

The Spiritual Life Is First Of All A Life. It Is Not Merely Something To Be Known And Studied, It Is To Be Lived.

But The Man Who Is Not Afraid To Admit Everything That He Sees To Be Wrong With Himself, And Yet Recognizes That He May Be The Object Of God's Love Precisely Because Of His Shortcomings, Can Begin To Be Sincere. His Sincerity Is Based On Confidence, Not In His Own Illusions About Himself, But In The Endless, Unfailing Mercy Of God.

Despair Is The Absolute Extreme Of Self-love. It Is Reached When A Person Deliberately Turns His Back On All Help From Anyone Else In Order To Taste The Rotten Luxury Of Knowing Himself To Be Lost

Pardon All Runners, All Speechless, Alien Winds, All Mad Waters. Pardon Their Impulses, Their Wild Attitudes, Their Young Flights, Their Reticence. When A Message Has No Clothes On How Can It Be Spoken.

Advertising Treats All Products With The Reverence And The Seriousness Due To Sacraments.

For Me To Be A Saint Means To Be Myself. Therefore The Problem Of Sanctity And Salvation Is In Fact The Problem Of Finding Out Who I Am And Of Discovering My True Self.

‎"our Job Is To Love Others Without Stopping To Inquire Whether Or Not They Are Worthy.

I Cannot Make The Universe Obey Me. I Cannot Make Other People Conform To My Own Whims And Fancies. I Cannot Make Even My Own Body Obey Me.

May God Prevent Us From Becoming "right-thinking Men"-that Is To Say Men Who Agree Perfectly With Their Own Police.

... Nothing Resembles Reality Less Than The Photograph. Nothing Resembles Substance Less Than Its Shadow. To Convey The Meaning Of Something Substantial You Have To Use Not A Shadow But A Sign, Not The Limitation But The Image. The Image Is A New And Different Reality, And Of Course It Does Not Convey An Impression Of Some Object, But The Mind Of The Subject; And That Is Something Else Again.

I Am Beginning To Realize That "sanity" Is No Longer A Value Or An End In Itself. The "sanity" Of Modern Man Is About As Useful To Him As The Huge Bulk And Muscles Of The Dinosaur. If He Were A Little Less Sane, A Little More Doubtful, A Little More Aware Of His Absurdities And Contradictions, Perhaps There Might Be A Possibility Of His Survival.

The Artist Should Preach Nothing-not Even His Own Autonomy. His Art Should Speak Its Own Truth, And In So Doing It Will Be In Harmony With Every Other Kind Of Truth- Moral, Metaphysical, Mystical.

Faith Is A Light Of Such Supreme Brilliance That It Dazzles The Mind And Darkens All Its Visions Of Other Realities, But In The End When We Become Used To The New Light, We Gain A New View Of All Reality Transfigured And Elevated In The Light Itself.

Pride Makes Us Artificial And Humility Makes Us Real.

Humility Is The Surest Sign Of Strength.

All Men Who Live Only According To Their Five Senses, And Seek Nothing Beyond The Gratification Of Their Natural Appetites For Pleasure And Reputation And Power, Cut Themselves Off From That Charity Which Is The Principle Of All Spiritual Vitality And Happiness Because It Alone Saves Us From The Barren Wilderness Of Our Own Abominable Selfishness.

The Basic Problem Is Not Political, It Is Apolitical And Human. One Of The Most Important Things To Do Is To Keep Cutting Deliberately Through Political Lines And Barriers And Emphasizing The Fact That These Are Largely Fabrications And That There Is Another Dimension, A Genuine Reality, Totally Opposed To The Fictions Of Politics: The Human Dimension Which Politics Pretend To Arrogate Entirely To Themselves. This Is The Necessary First Step Along The Long Way Toward The Perhaps Impossible Task Of Purifying, Humanizing And Somehow Illuminating Politics Themselves.

If We Have Not Silence, God Is Not Heard In Our Music. If We Have No Rest God, Does Not Bless Our Work.

Music And Art And Poetry Attune The Soul To God.

We Cannot Possess The Truth Fully Until It Has Entered Into The Very Substance Of Our Life By Good Habits, And By A Certain Perfection Of Moral Activity.

Do Not Be Too Quick To Assume Your Enemy Is A Savage Just Because He Is Your Enemy. Perhaps He Is Your Enemy Because He Thinks You Are A Savage. Or Perhaps He Is Afraid Of You Because He Feels That You Are Afraid Of Him. And Perhaps If He Believed You Are Capable Of Loving Him He Would No Longer Be Your Enemy.

The Gift Of Love Is The Gift Of The Power And Capacity To Love, And Therefore, To Give Love With Full Effect Is Also To Receive It. So Love Can Only Be Kept By Being Given Away, And It Can Only Be Given Perfectly When It Is Also Received.

Law Of Attraction

A Purely Mental Life May Be Destructive If It Leads Us To Substitute Thought For Life And Ideas For Actions. The Activity Proper To Man Is Purely Mental Because Man Is Not Just A Disembodied Mind. Our Destiny Is To Live Out What We Think, Because Unless We Live What We Know, We Do Not Even Know It. It Is Only By Making Our Knowledge Part Of Ourselves, Through Action, That We Enter Into The Reality That Is Signified By Our Concepts.

The Most Dangerous Man In The World Is The Contemplative Who Is Guided By Nobody. He Trusts His Own Visions. He Obeys The Attractions Of An Interior Voice But Will Not Listen To Other Men. He Identifies The Will Of God With Anything That Makes Him Feel, Within His Own Heart, A Big, Warm, Sweet Interior Glow. The Sweeter And The Warmer The Feeling Is, The More He Is Convinced Of His Own Infallibility.

A Christian Is Committed To The Belief That Love And Mercy Are The Most Powerful Forces On Earth.

Humility Is A Virtue, Not A Neurosis.

Love Is Not A Mere Emotion Or Sentiment. It Is The Lucid And Ardent Responses Of The Whole Person To A Value That Is Revealed To Him As Perfect.

You Must Realize That It Is The Ordinary Way Of God's Dealings With Us That Our Ideas Do Not Work Out Speedily And Efficiently As We Would Like Them To. The Reason For This Is Not Only The Loving Wisdom Of God, But Also The Fact That Our Acts Have To Fit Into A Great Complex Pattern That We Cannot Possibly Understand. I Have Learned Over The Years That Providence Is Always A Whole Lot Wiser Than Any Of Us, And That There Are Always Not Only Good Reasons, But The Very Best Reasons For The Delays And Blocks That Often Seem To Us So Frustrating And Absurd.

Those Who Think They 'know' From The Beginning Will Never In Fact Come To Know Anything.

Action Is The Stream, And Contemplation Is The Spring.

The Only True Liberty Is In The Service Of That Which Is Beyond All Limits, Beyond All Definitions, Beyond All Human Appreciation: That Which Is All, And Which Therefore Is No Limited Or Individual Thing: The All Is No-thing, For If It Were To Be A Single Thing Separated From All Other Things, It Would Not Be All.

We Do Not Want To Be Beginners. But Let Us Be Convinced Of The Fact That We Will Never Be Anything Else But Beginners, All Our Life!

Stop Thinking And Start Looking.

If Zen Has Any Preference It Is For Glass That Is Plain, Has No Color, And Is "just Glass."

The True Contemplative Is One Who Has Discovered The Art Of Finding Leisure Even In The Midst Of His Work, By Working With Such A Spirit Of Detachment And Recollection That Even His Work Is A Prayer

Lovely Morning! How Lovely Life Can Be!

The Biggest Human Temptation Is... To Settle For Too Little.

Contemplation Is Life Itself, Fully Awake, Fully Active, And Fully Aware That It Is Alive. It Is Spiritual Wonder. It Is Spontaneous Awe At The Sacredness Of Life, Of Being. It Is Gratitude For Life, For Awareness, And For Being. It Is A Vivid Realization Of The Fact That Life And Being In Us Proceed From An Invisible, Transcendent, And Infinitely Abundant Source.

I Had Refused To Pay Any Attention To The Moral Laws Upon Which All Our Vitality And Sanity Depend: And So Now I Was Reduced To The Condition Of A Silly Old Woman, Worrying About A Lot Of Imaginary Rules Of Health, Standards Of Food-value, And A Thousand Minute Details Of Conduct That Were In Themselves Completely Ridiculous And Stupid, And Yet Which Haunted Me With Vague And Terrific Sanctions. If I Eat This, I May Go Out Of My Mind. If I Do Not Eat That, I May Die In The Night.

There Should Be At Least A Room Or Some Corner Where No One Will Find You And Disturb You Or Notice You.

But There Is Greater Comfort In The Substance Of Silence Than In The Answer To A Question.

There Is A Logic Of Language And A Logic Of Mathematics.

What Is 'grace'? It Is God's Own Life, Shared By Us. God's Life Is Love. Deus Caritas Est. By Grace We Are Able To Share In The Infinitely Selfless Love Of Him Who Is Such Pure Actuality That He Needs Nothing And Therefore Cannot Conceivably Exploit Anything For Selfish Ends. Indeed, Outside Of Him There Is Nothing, And Whatever Exists Exists By His Free Gift Of Its Being, So That One Of The Notions That Is Absolutely Contradictory To The Perfection Of God Is Selfishness.

It Is My Belief, That We Should Not Be Too Sure Of Having Found Christ In Ourselves Until We Have Found Him Also In That Part Of Humanity That Is Most Remote From Our Own.

Man Was Made For The Highest Activity, Which Is, In Fact, His Rest.

Every Man Becomes The Image Of The God He Adores. He Whose Worship Is Directed To A Dead Thing Becomes Dead. He Who Loves Corruption Rots. He Who Loves A Shadow Becomes, Himself, A Shadow. He Who Loves Things That Must Perish Lives In Dread Of Their Perishing.

Weaknesses And Deficiencies . . . Play A Most Important Part In All Our Lives. It Is Because Of Them That We Need Others And Others Need Us. We Are Not All Weak In The Same Spots, And So We Supplement And Complete One Another, Each One Making Up In Himself For The Lack In Another.

A Man Searching For Enlightenment Is Like A Man Sitting On An Ass In Search Of An Ass

The Truth That Many People Never Understand Until It Is Too Late Is That The More You Try To Avoid Suffering, The More You Suffer.

World Suffering

The Lights Of Prayer That Make Us Imagine We Are Beginning To Be Angels Are Sometimes Only Signs That We Are Finally Beginning To Be Men. We Do Not Have A High Enough Opinion Of Our Own Nature. We Think We Are At The Gates Of Heaven And We Are Only Just Beginning To Come Into Our Own Realm As Free And Intelligent Beings.

It Is Both Dangerous And Easy To Hate Man As He Is Because He Is Not What He Ought To Be. If We Do Not First Respect What He Is We Will Never Suffer Him To Become What He Ought To Be: In Our Impatience We Do Away With Him Altogether.

To Worship Our False Selves Is To Worship Nothing. And The Worship Of Nothing Is Hell.

Love Is The Door To Eternity.

There Is Always A Temptation To Diddle Around In The Contemplative Life, Making Itsy-bitsy Statues.

Contemplative Life

The Bible Is Not Primarily A Written Or Printed Text To Be Scrutinized In Private, In A Scholar's Study Or A Contemplative Cell. It Is A Body Of Oral Messages, Announcements, Prophecies, Promulgations, Recitals, Histories, Songs Of Praise, Lamentations, Etc., Which Are Meant Either To Be Uttered Or At Least Read Aloud, Or Chanted, Or Sung, Or Recited In A Community Convoked For The Purpose Of A Living Celebration.

My Spiritual Goal Is To One Day Walk Into God And Disappear.

God Has Brought Me To Kentucky...the Precise Place He Has Chosen For My Sanctification.

Our Minds Are Like Crows. They Pick Up Everything That Glitters, No Matter How Uncomfortable Our Nests Get With All That Metal In Them.

We Cannot Arrive At The Perfect Possession Of God In This Life, And That Is Why We Are Travelling And In Darkness. But We Already Possess Him By Grace, And Therefore In That Sense We Have Arrived And Are Dwelling In The Light. But Oh! How Far Have I To Go To Find You In Whom I Have Already Arrived!

Power Always Protects The Good Of Some At The Expense Of All Others.

A Tree Gives Glory To God By Being A Tree. For In Being What God Means It To Be It Is Obeying Him.... The More A Tree Is Like Itself, The More It Is Like Him.

If We Wait For Some People To Become Agreeable Or Attractive Before We Begin To Love Them, We Will Never Begin. If We Are Content To Give Them A Cold Impersonal 'charity' That Is Merely A Matter Of Obligation, We Will Not Trouble To Understand Them Or To Sympathize With Them At All. And In That Case We Will Not Really Love Them, Because Love Implies An Efficacious Will Not Only To Do Good To Others Exteriorly But Also To Find Some Good In Them To Which We Can Respond."

The Selfishness Of An Age That Has Devoted Itself To The Mere Cult Of Pleasure Has Tainted The Whole Human Race With An Error That Makes All Our Acts More Or Less Lies Against God.

You Do Not Need To Know Precisely What Is Happening, Or Exactly Where It Is All Going. What You Need Is To Recognize The Possibilities And Challenges Offered By The Present Moment, And To Embrace Them With Courage, Faith And Hope.

By My Monastic Life And Vows I Am Saying No To All The Concentration Camps, The Aerial Bombardments, The Staged Political Trials, The Judicial Murders, The Racial Injustices, The Economic Tyrannies, And The Whole Socioeconomic Apparatus Which Seems Geared For Nothing But Global Destruction In Spite Of All Its Fair Words In Favor Of Peace.

Our Happiness Consists In Sharing The Happiness Of God, The Perfection Of His Unlimited Freedom, The Perfection Of His Love.

To Be Risen With Christ Means Not Only That One Has A Choice And That One May Live By A Higher Law - The Law Of Grace And Love - But That One Must Do So. The First Obligation Of The Christian Is To Maintain Their Freedom From All Superstitions, All Blind Taboos And Religious Formalities, Indeed From All Empty Forms Of Legalism.

Life Is Not Accomplishing Some Special Work But Attaining To A Degree Of Consciousness And Inner Freedom Which Is Beyond All Works And Attainments.

In General, It Can Be Said That No Contemplative Life Is Possible Without Ascetic Self-discipline. One Must Learn To Survive Without The Habit-forming Luxuries Which Get Such A Hold On Men Today. I Do Not Say That To Be A Contemplative One Absolutely Has To Go Without Smoking Or Without Alcohol, But Certainly One Must Be Able To Use These Things Without Being Dominated By An Uncontrolled Need For Them.

Contemplative Life

How Do You Expect To Arrive At The End Of Your Own Journey If You Take The Road To Another Man's City?

Hurry Ruins Saints As Well As Artists. They Want Quick Success, And They Are In Such A Hurry To Get It That They Cannot Take Time To Be True To Themselves. And When The Madness Is Upon Them, They Argue That Their Very Haste Is A Species Of Integrity.

Many Poets Are Not Poets For The Same Reason That Many Religious Men Are Not Saints: They Never Succeed In Being Themselves. They Never Get Around To Being The Particular Poet Or The Particular Monk They Are Intended To Be By God. They Never Become The Man Or The Artist Who Is Called For By All The Circumstances Of Their Individual Lives. They Waste Their Years In Vain Efforts To Be Some Other Poet, Some Other Saint...they Wear Out Their Minds And Bodies In A Hopeless Endeavor To Have Somebody Else's Experiences Or Write Somebody Else's Poems.

The Logic Of The Poet - That Is, The Logic Of Language Or The Experience Itself - Develops The Way A Living Organism Grows: It Spreads Out Towards What It Loves, And Is Heliotropic, Like A Plant.

It Is Not Only Our Hatred Of Others That Is Dangerous But Also And Above All Our Hatred Of Ourselves: Particularly That Hatred Of Ourselves Which Is Too Deep And Too Powerful To Be Consciously Faced. For It Is This Which Makes Us See Our Own Evil In Others And Unable To See It In Ourselves.

The Meaning Of Life Is Found In Openness To Being And "being Present" In Full Awareness.

And That Is Why The Man Who Wants To See Clearly, Before He Will Believe, Never Starts On The Journey.

Place No Hope In The Feeling Of Assurance, In Spiritual Comfort. You May Well Have To Get Along Without This. Place No Hope In The Inspirational Preachers Of Christian Sunshine, Who Are Able To Pick You Up And Set You Back On Your Feet And Make You Feel Good For Three Or Four Days-until You Fold Up And Collapse Into Despair. Self-confidence Is A Precious Natural Gift, A Sign Of Health. But It Is Not The Same Thing As Faith. Faith Is Much Deeper, And It Must Be Deep Enough To Subsist When We Are Weak, When We Are Sick, When Our Self-confidence Is Gone, When Our Self-respect Is Gone.

At The Center Of Our Being Is A Point Of Nothingness Which Is Untouched By Illusion, A Point Of Pure Truth, A Point Or Spark Which Belongs Entirely To God, Which Is Never At Our Disposal, From Which God Disposes Of Our Life, Which Is Inaccessable To The Fantasies Of Our Own Mind Or The Brutalities Of Our Own Will. This Little Point Of Nothingness And Of Absolute Poverty Is The Pure Glory Of God In Us.

While Some Men See Ordinary Happenings, Others See Divine Light And Guidance.

Paradoxically, I Have Found Peace Because I Have Always Been Dissatisfied. My Moments Of Depression And Despair Turn Out To Be Renewals, New Beginnings. If I Were Once To Settle Down And Be Satisfied With The Surface Of Life, With Its Divisions And Its Cliches, It Would Be Time To Call In The Undertaker... So, Then, This Dissatisfaction Which Sometimes Used To Worry Me And Has Certainly, I Know, Worried Others, Has Helped Me In Fact To Move Freely And Even Gaily With The Stream Of Life.

There Is Not True Intimacy Between Souls Who Do Not Know How To Respect One Another's Solitude.

We Are Obliged To Love One Another. We Are Not Strictly Bound To "like" One Another.

Love One Another

The Danger Of Education, I Have Found, Is That It So Easily Confuses Means With Ends. Worse Than That, It Quite Easily Forgets Both And Devotes Itself Merely To The Mass Production Of Uneducated Gradtuates - People Literaly Unfit For Anything Except To Take Part In An Elaborate And Completely Artificial Charade Which They And Their Contemporaries Have Conspired To Call "life".

The Most Awful Tyranny Is That Of The Proximate Utopia Where The Last Sins Are Currently Being Eliminated And Where, Tomorrow, There Will Be No More Sins Because All The Sinners Will Have Been Wiped Out.

Instead Of Hating The People You Think Are War-makers, Hate The Appetites And Disorder In Your Own Soul, Which Are The Causes Of War. If You Love Peace, Then Hate Injustice, Hate Tyranny, Hate Greed - But Hate These Things In Yourself, Not In Another.

Curiously, The Most Serious Religious People, Or The Most Concerned Scholars, Those Who Constantly Read The Bible As A Matter Of Professional Or Pious Duty, Can Often Manage To Evade A Radically Involved Dialogue With The Book They Are Questioning.

Peace Demands The Most Heroic Labor And The Most Difficult Sacrifice.

If We Seek Paradise Outside Ourselves, We Cannot Have Paradise In Our Hearts.

Silence Has Many Dimensions. It Can Be A Regression And An Escape, A Loss Of Self, Or It Can Be Presence, Awareness, Unification, Self-discovery. Negative Silence Blurs And Confuses Our Identity, And We Lapse Into Daydreams Or Diffuse Anxieties. Positive Silence Pulls Us Together And Makes Us Realize Who We Are, Who We Might Be, And The Distance Between These Two.

The Grateful Person Knows That God Is Good, Not By Hearsay But By Experience. And That Is What Makes All The Difference.

If A Man Is To Live, He Must Be All Alive, Body, Soul, Mind, Heart, Spirit.

Life Consists In Learning To Live On One's Own, Spontaneous, Freewheeling: To Do This One Must Recognize What Is One's Own-be Familiar And At Home With Oneself. This Means Basically Learning Who One Is, And Learning What One Has To Offer To The Contemporary World, And Then Learning How To Make That Offering Valid.

Our Real Journey In Life Is Interior; It Is A Matter Of Growth, Deepening, And Of An Ever Greater Surrender To The Creative Action Of Love And Grace In Our Hearts. Never Was It More Necessary To Respond To That Action.

What Is The Use Of Praying If At The Very Moment Of Prayer, We Have So Little Confidence In God That We Are Busy Planning Our Own Kind Of Answer To Our Prayer?

One Thing Is Certain: The Humility Of Faith, If It Is Followed By The Proper Consequences-by The Acceptance Of The Work And Sacrifice Demanded By Our Providential Task-will Do Far More To Launch Us Into The Full Current Of Historical Reality Than The Pompous Rationalizations Of Politicians Who Think They Are Somehow The Directors And Manipulators Of History.

Love Is Free; It Does Not Depend On The Desirability Of Its Object, But Loves For Love's Sake.

Because You Have Called Me Here Not To Wear A Label By Which I Can Recognize Myself And Place Myself In Some Kind Of A Category. You Do Not Want Me To Be Thinking About What I Am, But About What You Are. Or Rather, You Do Not Even Want Me To Be Thinking About Anything Much: For You Would Raise Me Above The Level Of Thought. And If I Am Always Trying To Figure Out What I Am And Where I Am And Why I Am, How Will That Work Be Done?

In Our Creation, God Asked A Question And In Our Truly Living; God Answers The Question.

The Whole Function Of The Life Of Prayer Is, Then, To Enlighten And Strengthen Our Conscience So That It Not Only Knows And Perceives The Outward, Written Precepts Of The Moral And Divine Laws, But Above All Lives God's Law In Concrete Reality By Perfect And Continual Union With His Will.

My Own Personal Task Is Not Simply That Of Poet And Writer (still Less Commentator, Pseudo-prophet); It Is Basically To Praise God Out Of An Inner Center Of Silence, Gratitude, And 'awareness.' This Can Be Realized In A Life That Apparently Accomplishes Nothing. Without Centering On Accomplishment Or Nonaccomplishment, My Task Is Simply The Breathing Of This Gratitude From Day To Day, In Simplicity, And For The Rest Turning My Hand To Whatever Comes, Work Being Part Of Praise, Whether Splitting Logs Or Writing Poems, Or Best Of All Simple Notes.

Do Not Be Too Quick To Condemn The Man Who No Longer Believes In God: For It Is Perhaps Your Own Coldness And Avarice And Mediocrity And Materialism And Selfishness That Have Chilled His Faith.

Love Is...like A Spring Coming Up Out Of The Ground Of Our Own Depths. "i Am Gift." All That I Am Is Something That's Given, And Given Freely. Being Doesn't Cost Anything. There's No Price Tag, No Strings Attached.

The Whole Idea Of Compassion Is Based On A Keen Awareness Of The Interdependence Of All These Living Beings, Which Are All Part Of One Another, And All Involved In One Another.

Solitude Is A Way To Defend The Spirit Against The Murderous Din Of Our Materialism.

We Are Living In A World That Is Absolutely Transparent And God Is Shining Through It All The Time. God Manifests Himself Everywhere, In Everything - In People And In Things And In Nature And In Events ... The Only Thing Is We Don't See It ... I Have No Program For This Seeing. It Is Only Given. But The Gate Of Heaven Is Everywhere.

You Have Got Me Walking Up And Down All Day Under Those Trees, Saying To Me Over And Over Again, "solitude, Solitude." And You Have Turned Around And Thrown The World In My Lap. You Have Told Me, "leave All Things And Follow Me," And Then You Have Tied Half Of New York To My Foot Like A Ball And Chain. You Have Got Me Kneeling Behind That Pillar With My Mind Making A Noise Like A Bank. Is That Contemplation?

I Believe That The Desire To Please You Does In Fact Please You.

Every Man Has A Vocation To Be Someone: But He Must Understand Clearly That In Order To Fulfill This Vocation He Can Only Be One Person: Himself.

We Must Make The Choices That Enable Us To Fulfill The Deepest Capacities Of Our Real Selves.

Decisions You Make

For Pride, Which Is The Inordinate Attribution Of Goods And Values And Glories To One's Own Contingent Self, Cannot Exist Where There Is No Contingent Self To Which Anything Can Be Attributed.

A Faith That Is Afraid Of Other People Is No Faith At All.

The Whole Purpose Of Spiritual Direction Is To Penetrate Beneath The Surface Of A Man's Life, To Get Behind The Façade Of Conventional Gestures And Attitudes Which He Presents To The World, And To Bring Out His Inner Spiritual Freedom, His Inmost Truth, Which Is What We Call The Likeness Of Christ In His Soul.

Either You Look At The Universe As A Very Poor Creation Out Of Which No One Can Make Anything, Or You Look At Your Own Life And Your Own Part In The Universe As Infinitely Rich, Full Of Inexhaustible Interest, Opening Out Into The Infinite Further Responsibilities For Study And Contemplation And Interest And Praise. Beyond All And In All Is God.

Thinking About Monastic Ideals Is Not The Same As Living Up To Them, But At Any Rate Such Thinking Has An Important Place In A Monk's Life, Because You Cannot Begin To Do Anything Unless You Have Some Idea What You Are Trying To Do.

In An Age Where There Is Much Talk About "being Yourself," I Reserve To Myself The Right To Forget About Being Myself, Since In Any Case There Is Very Little Chance Of My Being Anybody Else.

If There Was No Other Proof Of The Infinite Patience Of God, A Very Good One Could Be Found In His Toleration Of The Pictures That Are Painted Of Him.

There Is In Us An Instinct For Newness, For Renewal, For A Liberation Of Creative Power. We Seek To Awaken In Ourselves A Force Which Really Changes Our Lives From Within. And Yet The Same Instinct Tells Us That This Change Is A Recovery Of That Which Is Deepest, Most Original, Most Personal In Ourselves. To Be Born Again Is Not To Become Somebody Else, But To Become Ourselves.

The Imagination Should Be Allowed A Certain Amount Of Time To Browse Around.

No One Is So Wrong As The Man Who Knows All The Answers.

It Is When We Love The Other, The Enemy, That We Obtain From God The Key To An Understanding Of Who He Is, And Who We Are.

Today Will Never Come Again.

There Is No Greater Disaster In The Spiritual Life Than To Be Immersed In Unreality, For Life Is Maintained And Nourished In Us By Our Vital Relation With Realities Outside And Above Us.

The Only Right Way: To Love And Serve The Man Of The Modern World, But Not Simply To Succumb, With Him, To All His Illusions About The World.

I Was Not Sure Where I Was Going, And I Could Not See What I Would Do When I Got [there]. But You Saw Further And Clearer Than I, And You Opened The Seas Before My Ship, Whose Track Led Me Across The Waters To A Place I Had Never Dreamed Of, And Which You Were Even Then Preparing To Be My Rescue And My Shelter And My Home.

Do Not Look For Rest In Any Pleasure, Because You Were Not Created For Pleasure: You Were Created For Joy. And If You Do Not Know The Difference Between Pleasure And Joy You Have Not Yet Begun To Live.

Our Vocation Is Not Simply To Be, But To Work Together With God In The Creation Of Our Own Life, Our Own Identity, Our Own Destiny....to Work Out Our Identity In God.

Meditation Is One Of The Ways In Which The Spiritual Man Keeps Himself Awake.

Not All Of Us Are Called To Be Hermits, But All Of Us Need Enough Silence And Solitude In Our Lives To Enable The Deeper Voice Of Our Own Self To Be Heard At Least Occasionally.

A Tree Gives Glory To God By Being A Tree. For In Being What God Means It To Be It Is Obeying [god]. It “consents,” So To Speak, To [god's] Creative Love. It Is Expressing An Idea Which Is In God And Which Is Not Distinct From The Essence Of God, And Therefore A Tree Imitates God By Being A Tree

The Rush And Pressure Of Modern Life Are A Form, Perhaps The Most Common Form, Of Contemporary Violence. To Allow Oneself To Be Carried Away By A Multitude Of Conflicting Concerns, To Surrender To Too Many Demands, To Commit Oneself To Too Many Projects, To Want To Help Everyone In Everything, Is To Succumb To Violence. The Frenzy Of Our Activity Neutralizes Our Work For Peace. It Destroys Our Own Inner Capacity For Peace. It Destroys The Fruitfulness Of Our Own Work, Because It Kills The Root Of Inner Wisdom Which Makes Work Fruitful.

The Sky Is My Prayer, The Birds Are My Prayer, The Wind In The Trees Is My Prayer, For God Is All In All.

The Art Of Our Time, Sacred Art Included, Will Necessarily Be Characterized By A Certain Poverty, Grimness And Roughness Which Correspond To The Violent Realities Of A Cruel Age.

The Holy Spirit Is The Most Perfect Gift Of The Father To Men, And Yet He Is The One Gift Which The Father Gives Most Easily.

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