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The Evil In The World Is All Of Our Own Making, And It Proceeds Entirely From Our Ruthless, Senseless, Wasteful, Destructive, And Suicidal Neglect Of Our Own Being.

-Thomas Merton

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The Evil In The

Thomas Merton

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The Evil In The World Is All Of Our Own Making, And It Proceeds Entirely From Our Ruthless, Senseless, Wasteful, Destructive, And Suicidal Neglect Of Our Own Being.

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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.

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.

Duty Does Not Have To Be Dull. Love Can Make It Beautiful And Fill It With Life.

The Light Of Truth Burns Without A Flicker In The Depths Of A House That Is Shaken With Storms Of Passion And Fear.

But Precisely This Illusion That Everything Is "clear" Is What Is Blinding Us All. It Is A Serious Temptation, And It Is A Subtle Form Of Pride And Worldly Love Of Power And Revenge.

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

It Is True That We Are Called To Create A Better World. But We Are First Of All Called To A More Immediate And Exalted Task: That Of Creating Our Own Lives.

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.

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

I Would Call The Attention Of The Reader To The Difference Between "reason" And "reasoning." Reason Is A Light, Reasoning A Process. Reason Is A Faculty, Reasoning An Exercise Of That Faculty. Reasoning Proceeds From One Truth To Another By Means Of Argumentation. This Generally Involves The Whole Mind In Labor And Complexity. But Reason Does Not Exist Merely In Order To Engage In Reasoning. The Process Is A Means To An End. The True Fulfillment Of Reason As A Faculty Is Found When It Can Embrace The Truth Simply And Without Labor In The Light Of Single Intuition.

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

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?

When You See God In Everyone, Then They See God In You.

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 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.

True Happiness Is Not Found In Any Other Reward Than That Of Being United With God. If I Seek Some Other Reward Besides God Himself, I May Get My Reward But I Cannot Be Happy.

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.

See, See Who God Is, See The Glory Of God, Going Up To Him Out Of This Incomprehensible And Infinite Sacrifice In Which All History Begins And Ends, All Individual Lives Begin And End, In Which Every Story Is Told, And Finished, And Settled For Joy Or For Sorrow: The One Point Of Reference For All The Truths That Are Outside Of God, Their Center, Their Focus: Love.

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.

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.

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.

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

Self-conquest Is Really Self-surrender. Yet Before We Can Surrender Ourselves We Must Become Ourselves. For No One Can Give Up What He Does Not Possess.

The Biggest Disease In North America Is Busyness.

Action Is The Stream, And Contemplation Is The Spring.

You Will Never Be Able To Have Perfect Interior Peace And Recollection Unless You Are Detached Even From The Desire Of Peace And Recollection. You Will Never Be Able To Pray Perfectly Until You Are Detached From The Pleasures Of Prayer.

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.

The Real Hope Is Not In Something We Think We Can Do, But In God, Who Is Making Something Good Out Of It In Some Way We Cannot See.

In The Devil's Theology, The Important Thing Is To Be Absolutely Right And To Prove That Everybody Else Is Absolutely Wrong.

Every Moment And Every Event Of Every Man's Life On Earth Plants Something In His Soul.

If You Want To Study The Social And Political History Of Modern Nations, Study Hell.

Indeed, It Is A Kind Of Quintessence Of Pride To Hate And Fear Even The Kind And Legitimate Approval Of Those Who Love Us! I Mean, To Resent It As A Humiliating Patronage.

The Whole Idea Of Compassion Is Based On A Keen Awareness Of The Other.... The Whole Purpose Of Life Is To Live By Love.

As A Magnifying Glass Concentrates The Rays Of The Sun Into A Little Burning Knot Of Heat That Can Set Fire To A Dry Leaf Or A Piece Of Paper, So The Mystery Of Christ In The Gospel Concentrates The Rays Of God's Light And Fire To A Point That Sets Fire To The Spirit Of Man. ... Through The Glass Of His Incarnation He Concentrates The Rays Of His Divine Truth And Love Upon Us So That We Feel The Burn, And All Mystical Experience Is Communicated To Men Through The Man Christ.

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.

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

Decisions You Make

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.

Music Is Pleasing Not Only Because Of The Sound But Because Of The Silence That Is In It: Without The Alternation Of Sound And Silence There Would Be No Rhythm.

God, Who Is Everywhere, Never Leaves Us. Yet He Seems Sometimes To Be Present, Sometimes To Be Absent. If We Do Not Know Him Well, We Do Not Realize That He May Be More Present To Us When He Is Absent Than When He Is Present.

No Writing On The Solitary, Meditative Dimensions Of Life Can Say Anything That Has Not Already Been Said Better By The Wind In The Pine Trees.

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

When I Am Liberated By Silence, When I Am No Longer Involved In The Measurement Of Life, But In The Living Of It, I Can Discover A Form Of Prayer In Which There Is Effectively No Distraction. My Whole Life Becomes A Prayer. My Whole Silence Is Full Of Prayer. The World Of Silence In Which I Am Immersed Contributes To My Prayer.

The Simplest And Most Effective Way To Sanctity Is To Disappear Into The Background Of Ordinary Every Day Routine.

It's A Risky Thing To Pray And The Danger Is That Our Very Prayers Get Between God And Us. The Great Thing In Prayer Is Not To Pray, But To Go Directly To God. . . . The Fact Is, Though, That If You Descend Into The Depths Of Your Own Spirit And Arrive Somewhere Near The Center Of What You Are, You Are Confronted With The Inescapable Truth That, At The Very Root Of Your Existence, You Are In Constant And Immediate Contact With The Infinite Power Of God.

Each Individual Christian And Each New Age Of The Church Has To Make This Rediscovery, This Return To The Source Of Christian Life.

... 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.

But If You Want To Identify Me, Ask Me Not Where I Live, Or What I Like To Eat, Or How I Comb My Hair, But Ask Me What I Think I Am Living For.

We Know When We Are Following Our Vocation When Our Soul Is Set Free From Preoccupation With Itself And Is Able To Seek God And Even To Find Him, Even Though It May Not Appear To Find Him. Gratitude And Confidence And Freedom From Ourselves: These Are Signs That We Have Found Our Vocation And Are Living Up To It Even Though Everything Else May Seem To Have Gone Wrong. They Give Us Peace In Any Suffering. They Teach Us To Laugh At Despair. And We May Have To.

Actions Are The Doors And Windows Of Being. Unless We Act, We Have No Way Of Knowing What We Are.

We Live On The Brink Of Disaster Because We Do Not Know How To Let Life Alone. We Do Not Respect The Living And Fruitful Contradictions And Paradoxes Of Which True Life Is Full.

Good Moral Actions Are Not Enough. Everything In Us, From The Very Depths, Must Be Cleansed And Reordered.

Love Winter When The Plant Says Nothing.

There Is A Pervasive Form Of Contemporary Violence To Which The Idealist Fighting For Peace By Nonviolent Methods Most Easily Succumbs; Activism And Overwork.

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.

Be Still: There Is No Longer Any Need Of Comment. It Was A Lucky Wind That Blew Away His Halo With His Cares, A Lucky Sea That Drowned His Reputation.

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.

The God Of Peace Is Never Glorified By Human Violence.

Faith Is The Door To The Full Inner Life Of The Church, A Life Which Includes Not Only Access To An Authoritative Teaching But Above All To A Deep Personal Experience Which Is At Once Unique And Yet Shared By The Whole Body Of Christ, In The Spirit Of Christ.

Humility Is The Surest Sign Of Strength.

The Silence Of The Forest Is My Bride And The Sweet Dark Warmth Of The Whole World Is My Love, And Out Of The Heart Of That Dark Warmth Comes The Secret That Is Heard Only In Silence, But It Is The Root Of All The Secrets That Are Whispered By All The Lovers In Their Beds All Over The World.

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.

None Of Our Prayers Should Ever Be Petitions For Our Own Needs: For This Is Only Another Subtle Way Of Trying To Put Ourselves On The Same Plane As God — Acting As If We Had No Needs, As If We Were Not Creatures, Not Dependent On Him.

For Every Gain In Deep Certitude There Is A Corresponding Growth Of Superficial "doubt." This Doubt Is By No Means Opposed To Genuine Faith, But It Mercilessly Examines And Questions The Spurious "faith" Of Everyday Life, The Human Faith Which Is Nothing But The Passive Acceptance Of Conventional Opinion.

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

If You Want To Have A Spiritual Life You Must Unify Your Life. A Life Is Either All Spiritual Or Not Spiritual At All.

Words Stand Between Silence And Silence: Between The Silence Of Things And The Silence Of Our Own Being. Between The Silence Of The World And The Silence Of God. When We Have Really Met And Known The World In Silence, Words Do Not Separate Us From The World Nor From Other Men, Nor From God, Nor From Ourselves Because We No Longer Trust Entirely In Language To Contain Reality.

The Psychological Impotence Of Our Enraged Generation Must Be Traced To The Overwhelming Accusation Of Insincerity Which Every Man And Woman Has To Confront, In The Depths Of His Own Soul, When He Seeks To Love Merely For His Own Pleasure.and Yet The Men Of Our Time Do Not Love With Enough Courage To Risk Even Discomfort Or Inconvenience.

Why Do We Have To Spend Our Lives Striving To Be Something That We Would Never Want To Be, If We Only Knew What We Wanted? Why Do We Waste Our Time Doing Things Which... Are Just The Opposite Of What We Were Made For?

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.

True Happiness Is Found In Unselfish Love, A Love Which Increases In Proportion As It Is Shared.

Happiness And Love

I Will Not Fear, For You Are Ever With Me And You Will Never Leave Me To Face My Perils Alone.

The Christian Life, And Especially The Contemplative Life, Is A Continual Discovery Of Christ In New And Unexpected Places.

Contemplative Life

The Purpose Of Our Lives Is To Find The Purpose Of Our Lives.

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

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.

The Real Reason Why So Few Men Believe In God Is That They Have Ceased To Believe That Even A God Can Love Them.

Things That Are Good Are Good, And If One Is Responding To That Goodness One Is In Contact With A Truth From Which One Is Getting Something. The Truth Is Doing Us Good. The Truth Of The Sunshine, The Truth Of The Rain, The Truth Of The Fresh Air, The Truth Of The Wind In The Trees, These Are Truths. And They Are Always Accessible!

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.

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.

When Your Tongue Is Silent, You Can Rest In The Silence Of The Forest. When Your Imagination Is Silent, The Forest Speaks To You. It Tells You Of Its Unreality And Of The Reality Of God. But When Your Mind Is Silent, Then The Forest Suddenly Becomes Magnificently Real And Blazes Transparently With The Reality Of God.

Every One Of Us Is Shadowed By An Illusory Person: A False Self. We Are Not Very Good At Recognizing Illusions, Least Of All The Ones We Cherish About Ourselves.

The Center Of Our Being Is A Point Of Nothingness Which Is Untouched By Sin And By Illusion, A Point Of Pure Truth.

Modern Man Believes He Is Fruitful And Productive When His Ego Is Aggressively Affirmed, When He Is Visibly Active, And When His Action Produces Obvious Results.

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.

We Have The Choice Of Two Identities: The External Mask Which Seems To Be Real...and The Hidden, Inner Person Who Seems To Us To Be Nothing, But Who Can Give Himself Eternally To The Truth In Whom He Subsists. (295)

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.

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.

The Great Thing, And The Only Thing, Is To Adore And Praise God.

Are They Moved By A Sense Of Human Need For Silence, For Reflection, For Inner Seeking? So They Want To Get Away From The Noise And Tension Of Modern Life, At Least For A Little While, In Order To Relax Their Minds And Wills And Seek A Blessed Healing Sense Of Inner Unity, Reconciliation, Integration?

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.

The Sacred Attitude Is, Then, One Of Deep And Fundamental Respect For The Real In Whatever New Form It May Present Itself.

I Have Learned That One Cannot Truly Know Hope Unless He Has Found Out How Like Despair Hope Is.

We Must Slow Down To A Human Tempo And We’ll Begin To Have Time To Listen.

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

Merely To Resist Evil With Evil By Hating Those Who Hate Us And Seeking To Destroy Them, Is Actually No Resistance At All. It Is Active And Purposeful Collaboration In Evil That Brings The Christian Into Direct And Intimate Contact With The Same Source Of Evil And Hatred Which Inspires The Acts Of His Enemy. It Leads In Practice To A Denial Of Christ And To The Service Of Hatred Rather Than Love.

How Far Have I To Go To Find You In Whom I Have Already Arrived.

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

And The Deepest Level Of Communication Is Not Communication, But Communion. It Is Wordless. It Is Beyond Words, And It Is Beyond Speech, And It Is Beyond Concept.

Our Christian Destiny Is, In Fact, A Great One: But We Cannot Achieve Greatness Unless We Lose All Interest In Being Great. For Our Own Idea Of Greatness Is Illusory, And If We Pay Too Much Attention To It We Will Be Lured Out Of The Peace And Stability Of The Being God Gave Us, And Seek To Live In A Myth We Have Created For Ourselves. And When We Are Truly Ourselves We Lose Most Of The Futile Self-consciousness That Keeps Us Constantly Comparing Ourselves With Others In Order To See How Big We Are.

Love Is A Special Way Of Being Alive.

October Is A Fine And Dangerous Season In America. A Wonderful Time To Begin Anything At All. You Go To College, And Every Course In The Catalogue Looks Wonderful.

Whose Silence Are You?

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.

If Nothing That Can Be Seen Can Either Be God Or Represent Him To Us As He Is, Then To Find God We Must Pass Beyond Everything That Can Be Seen And Enter Into Darkness. Since Nothing That Can Be Heard Is God, To Find Him We Must Enter Into Silence. Since God Cannot Be Imagined, Anything Our Imagination Tells Us About Him Is Ultimately A Lie And Therefore We Cannot Know Him As He Really Is Unless We Pass Beyond Everything That Can Be Imagined And Enter Into An Obscurity Without Images And Without The Likeness Of Any Created Thing.

For The Birds There Is Not A Time That They Tell, But The Point Vierge Between Darkness And Light, Between Being And Nonbeing. You Can Tell Yourself The Time By Their Waking, If You Are Experienced. But That Is Your Folly, Not Theirs.

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 Be Unknown To God Is Altogether Too Much Privacy.

Hurry Ruins Saints As Well As Artists.

Nevertheless, The Liturgy Of Ash Wednesday Is Not Focussed On The Sinfulness Of The Penitent But On The Mercy Of God. The Question Of Sinfulness Is Raised Precisely Because This Is A Day Of Mercy, And The Just Do Not Need A Savior.

The Man Who Fears To Be Alone Will Never Be Anything But Lonely, No Matter How Much He May Surround Himself With People. But The Man Who Learns, In Solitude And Recollection, To Be At Peace With His Own Loneliness, And To Prefer Its Reality To The Illusion Of Merely Natural Companionship, Comes To Know The Invisible Companionship Of God. Such A One Is Alone With God In All Places, And He Alone Truly Enjoys The Companionship Of Other Men, Because He Loves Them In God In Whom Their Presence Is Not Tiresome, And Because Of Whom His Own Love For Them Can Never Know Satiety.

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

The Devil Is No Fool. He Can Get People Feeling About Heaven The Way They Ought To Feel About Hell. He Can Make Them Fear The Means Of Grace The Way They Do Not Fear Sin. And He Does So, Not By Light But By Obscurity, Not By Realities But By Shadows; Not By Clarity And Substance, But By Dreams And The Creatures Of Psychosis. And Men Are So Poor In Intellect That A Few Cold Chills Down Their Spine Will Be Enough To Keep Them From Ever Finding Out The Truth About Anything.

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.

Solitude Is So Necessary Both For Society And For The Individual That When Society Fails To Provide Sufficient Solitude To Develop The Inner Life Of The Persons Who Compose It, They Rebel And Seek False Solitudes.

Music And Art And Poetry Attune The Soul To God.

Saints Are What They Are Not Because Their Sanctity Makes Them Admirable To Others, But Because The Gift Of Sainthood Makes It Possible For Them To Admire Everyone Else.

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.

On Pride: This Sickness Is Most Dangerous When It Succeeds In Looking Like Humility. When A Proud Man Thinks He Is Humble His Case Is Hopeless.

Love Seeks One Thing Only: The Good Of The One Loved. It Leaves All The Other Secondary Effects To Take Care Of Themselves. Love, Therefore, Is Its Own Reward.

Conscience Is The Light By Which We Interpret The Will Of God In Our Own Lives.

We Love The Things We Pretend To Laugh At.

Today Will Never Come Again.

Zen Insight Is Not Our Awareness, But Being's Awareness Of Itself In Us.

Contradictions Have Always Existed In The Soul Of [individuals]. But It Is Only When We Prefer Analysis To Silence That They Become A Constant And Insoluble Problem. We Are Not Meant To Resolve All Contradictions But To Live With Them And Rise Above Them And See Them In The Light Of Exterior And Objective Values Which Make Them Trivial By Comparison.

We Too Often Forget That Faith Is A Matter Of Questioning And Struggle Before It Becomes One Of Certitude And Peace. You Have To Doubt And Reject Everything Else In Order To Believe Firmly In Christ, And After You Have Begun To Believe, Your Faith Itself Must Be Tested And Purified. Christianity Is Not Merely A Set Of Forgone Conclusions. Faith Tends To Be Defeated By The Burning Presence Of God In Mystery, And Seeks Refuge From Him, Flying To Comfortable Social Forms And Safe Convictions In Which Purification Is No Longer An Inner Battle But A Matter Of Outward Gesture.

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

To Hope Is To Risk Frustration. Make Up Your Mind To Risk Frustration.

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

God Himself Begins To Live In Me Not Only As My Creator But As My Other And True Self.

Humble People Can Do Great Things With Uncommon Perfection Because They Are No Longer Concerned About Their Own Interests And Their Own Reputation, And Therefore They No Longer Need To Waste Their Efforts In Defending Them.

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.

We Are Not Perfectly Free Until We Live In Pure Hope. For When Our Hope Is Pure, It No Longer Trusts Exclusively In Human And Visible Means, Nor Rests In Any Visible End. He Who Hopes In God Trusts God, Whom He Never Sees, To Bring Him To The Possession Of Things That Are Beyond Imagination.

The Married Man And The Mother Of A Christian Family, If They Are Faithful To Their Obligations, Will Fulfill A Mission That Is As Great As It Is Consoling: That Of Bringing Into The World And Forming Young Souls Capable Of Happiness And Love, Souls Capable Of Sanctification And Transformation In Christ.

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

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.

O God, Teach Me To Be Satisfied With My Own Helplessness In The Spiritual Life. Teach Me To Be Content With Your Grace That Comes To Me In Darkness And That Works Things I Cannot See. Teach Me To Be Happy That I Can Depend On You. To Depend On You Should Be Enough For An Eternity Of Joy. To Depend On You By Itself Ought To Be Infinitely Greater Than Any Joy Which My Own Intellectual Appetite Could Desire.

Surrender Your Own Poverty And Acknowledge Your Nothingness To The Lord. Whether You Understand It Or Not, God Loves You, Is Present In You, Lives In You, Dwells In You, Calls You, Saves You And Offers You An Understanding And Compassion Which Are Like Nothing You Have Ever Found In A Book Or Heard In A Sermon.

The Camera Does Not Know What It Takes; It Captures Materials With Which You Reconstruct, Not So Much What You Saw As What You Thought You Saw. Hence The Best Photography Is Aware, Mindful, Of Illusion And Uses Illusion, Permitting And Encouraging It - Especially Unconscious And Powerful Illusions That Are Not Usually Admitted On The Scene.

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

It Is In The Ordinary Duties And Labors Of Life That The Christian Can And Should Develop His Spiritual Union With God.

I Can Depend Less And Less On My Own Power And Sense Of Direction...it Is So Strange To Advance Backwards And Get Where You Are Going In A Totally Unexpected Way

The Things We Really Need Come To Us Only As Gifts, And In Order To Receive Them As Gifts We Have To Be Open. In Order To Be Open We Have To Renounce Ourselves, In A Sense We Have To Die To Our Image Of Ourselves, Our Autonomy, Our Fixation Upon Our Self-willed Identity.

What I Wear Is Pants. What I Do Is Live. How I Pray Is Breathe.

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

Ordinary Things

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.

Love Is Perfect In Proportion To It's Freedom.

For The Sinful Self Is Not My Real Self, It Is Not The Self You Have Wanted For Me, Only The Self That I Have Wanted : And I No Longer Want This False Self. But Now, Father, I Come To You In Your Own Son's Self ... And It Is He Who Presents Me To You.

The Only Thing To Seek In Contemplative Prayer Is God; And We Seek Him Successfully When We Realize That We Cannot Find Him Unless He Shows Himself To Us, And Yet At The Same Time That He Would Not Have Inspired Us To Seek Him Unless We Had Already Found Him.

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?

To Love Our Nothingness We Must Love Everything In Us That The Proud Man Loves When He Loves Himself. But We Must Love It All For Exactly The Opposite Reason.

Love Is The Door To Eternity.

Be Good, Keep Your Feet Dry, Your Eyes Open, Your Heart At Peace And Your Soul In The Joy Of Christ.

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

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.

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.

Then It Was As If I Suddenly Saw The Secret Beauty Of Their Hearts, The Depths Of Their Hearts Where Neither Sin Nor Desire Nor Self-knowledge Can Reach, The Core Of Their Reality, The Person That Each One Is In God's Eyes. If Only They Could See Themselves As They Really Are. If Only We Could See Each Other That Way All The Time, There Would Be No More War, No More Hatred, No More Cruelty, No More Greed . . . I Suppose The Big Problem Would Be That We Would Fall Down And Worship Each Other.

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

Love Is An Intensification Of Life.

Therefore, Doing The Stations Of The Cross Was Still More Laborious Than Consoling, And Required A Sacrifice. It Was Much The Same With All My Devotions. They Did Not Come Easily Or Spontaneously, And They Very Seldom Brought With Them Any Strong Sensible Satisfaction. Nevertheless The Work Of Performing Them Ended In A Profound And Fortifying Peace: A Peace That Was Scarcely Perceptible, But Which Deepened And Which, As My Passions Subsided, Became More And More Real, More And More Sure, And Finally Stayed With Me Permanently.

We Are Already One. We Just Think We Are Separate.

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.

From The Moment You Put A Piece Of Bread In Your Mouth You Are Part Of The World. Who Grew The Wheat? Who Made The Bread? Where Did It Come From? You Are In Relationship With All Who Brought It To The Table. We Are Least Separate And Most In Common When We Eat And Drink.

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

To Enter Into The Realm Of Contemplation One Must In A Certain Sense Die: But This Death Is In Fact The Entrance To A Higher Life. It Is A Death For The Sake Of Life, Which Leaves Behind All That We Can Know Or Treasure As Life, As Thought, As Experience, As Joy, As Being.

The Truth Never Becomes Clear As Long As We Assume That Each One Of Us, Individually, Is The Center Of The Universe.

There Is A Subtle But Inescapable Connection Between The "sacred" Attitude And The Acceptance Of One's In Most Self.

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

Contemplative Life

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

Now Anxiety Is The Mark Of Spiritual Insecurity. It Is The Fruit Of Unanswered Questions. But Questions Cannot Go Unanswered Unless They First Be Asked.

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.

... But Any Fool Knows That You Don't Need Money To Get Enjoyment Out Of Life.

We Cannot Love Ourselves Unless We Love Others, And We Cannot Love Others Unless We Love Ourselves. But A Selfish Love Of Ourselves Makes Us Incapable Of Loving Others.

When Society Is Made Up Of Men Who Know No Interior Solitude It Can No Longer Be Held Together By Love: And Consequently It Is Held Together By A Violent And Abusive Authority. But When Men Are Violently Deprived Of The Solitude And Freedom Which Are Their Due, Then Society In Which They Live Becomes Putrid, It Festers With Servility, Resentment And Hate.

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.

The Cause Of Liberty Becomes A Mockery If The Price To Be Paid Is The Wholesale Destruction Of Those Who Are To Enjoy Liberty. Ghandi, Quoted In Merton, P. 68

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

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

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.

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

Unconditional Love

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

To Love Blindly Is To Love Selfishly, Because The Goal Of Such Love Is Not The Real Advantage Of The Beloved But Only The Exercise Of Love In Our Own Souls.

The Reality That Is Present To Us And In Us: Call It Being...silence. And The Simple Fact That By Being Attentive, By Learning To Listen (or Recovering The Natural Capacity To Listen) We Can Find Ourself Engulfed In Such Happiness That It Cannot Be Explained: The Happiness Of Being At One With Everything In That Hidden Ground Of Love For Which There Can Be No Explanations.... May We All Grow In Grace And Peace, And Not Neglect The Silence That Is Printed In The Center Of Our Being. It Will Not Fail Us.

They Were In The World And Not Of It--not Because They Were Saints, But In A Different Way: Because They Were Artists. The Integrity Of An Artist Lifts A Man Above The Level Of The World Without Delivering Him From It.

Our Job Is To Love Others Without Stopping To Inquire Whether Or Not They Are Worthy. That Is Not Our Business And, In Fact, It Is Nobody's Business. What We Are Asked To Do Is To Love, And This Love Itself Will Render Both Ourselves And Our Neighbors Worthy.

O God, My God, The Night Has Values That The Day Never Dreamed Of.

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.

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

For The Ones Who Are Called Saints By Human Opinion On Earth May Very Well Be Devils, And Their Light May Very Well Be Darkness

It Is True To Say That For Me Sanctity Consists In Being Myself And For You Sanctity Consists Of Being Yourself And That, In The Last Analysis, Your Sanctity Will Never Be Mine And Mine Will Never Be Yours, Except In The Communism Of Charity And Grace. 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.

You Cannot Be A Man Of Faith Unless You Know How To Doubt.

Solitude And Silence Teach Me To Love My Brothers For What They Are, Not For What They Say.

People Have No Idea What One Saint Can Do: For Sanctity Is Stronger Than The Whole Of Hell.

Our Whole Life Is A Meditation Of Our Last Decision - The Only Decision That Matters.

I Just Remember Their Kindness And Goodness To Me, And Their Peacefulness And Their Utter Simplicity. They Inspired Real Reverence, And I Think, In A Way, They Were Certainly Saints. And They Were Saints In That Most Effective And Telling Way: Sanctified By Leading Ordinary Lives In A Completely Supernatural Manner, Sanctified By Obscurity, By Usual Skills, By Common Tasks, By Routine, But Skills, Tasks, Routine Which Received A Supernatural Form From Grace Within.

The Speech Of God Is Silence. His Word Is Solitude.

Violence Is Not Completely Fatal Until It Ceases To Disturb Us.

The Secret Of My Full Identity Is Hidden In Him. He Alone Can Make Me Who I Am, Or Rather Who I Will Be When At Last I Fully Begin To Be. But Unless I Desire This Identity And Work To Find It With Him And In Him, The Work Will Never Be Done

Be Human In This Most Inhuman Of Ages; Guard The Image Of Man For It Is The Image Of God.

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.

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.

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