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The Soul Of Man, Left To Its Own Natural Level, Is A Potentially Lucid Crystal Left In Darkness. It Is Perfect In Its Own Nature, But It Lacks Something That It Can Only Receive From Outside And Above Itself. But When The Light Shines In It, It Becomes In A Manner Transformed Into Light And Seems To Lose Its Nature In The Splendor Of A Higher Nature, The Nature Of The Light That Is In It.

-Thomas Merton

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The Soul Of Man,

Thomas Merton

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The Soul Of Man, Left To Its Own Natural Level, Is A Potentially Lucid Crystal Left In Darkness. It Is Perfect In Its Own Nature, But It Lacks Something That It Can Only Receive From Outside And Above Itself. But When The Light Shines In It, It Becomes In A Manner Transformed Into Light And Seems To Lose Its Nature In The Splendor Of A Higher Nature, The Nature Of The Light That Is In It.

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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.

The Fact Remains That We Are Invited To Forget Ourselves On Purpose, Cast Our Awful Solemnity To The Wind, And Join In The General Dance.

The Primordial Blessing, 'increase And Multiply', Has Suddenly Become A Hemorrhage Of Terror. We Are Numbered In Billions, And Massed Together, Marshalled, Numbered, Marched Here And There, Taxed, Drilled, Armed, Worked To The Point Of Insensibility, Dazed By Information, Drugged By Entertainment, Surfeited With Everything, Nauseated With The Human Race And With Ourselves, Nauseated With Life.

In The Natural Order No Matter What Ideals May Be Theoretically Possible, Most People More Or Less Live For Themselves And For Their Own Interests And Pleasures Or For Those Of Their Own Family Or Group, And Therefore They Are Constantly Interfering With One Another's Aims, And Hurting One Another And Injuring One Another, Whether They Mean It Or Not.

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.

What Do I Mean By Loving Ourselves Properly? I Mean First Of All, Desiring To Live, Accepting Life As A Very Great Gift And A Great Good, Not Because Of What It Gives Us, But Because Of What It Enables Us To Give To Others.

The Mission Of Christian Humility In Social Life Is Not Merely To Edify, But To Keep Minds Open To Many Alternatives. The Rigidity Of A Certain Type Of Christian Thought Has Seriously Impaired This Capacity, Which Nonviolence Must Recover.

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.

The Things I Thought Were So Important -- Because Of The Effort I Put Into Them -- Have Turned Out To Be Of Small Value. And The Things I Never Thought About, The Things I Was Never Able To Either To Measure Or To Expect, Were The Things That Mattered.

A Man Knows When He Has Found His Vocation When He Stops Thinking About How To Live And Begins To Live.

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.

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?

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.

He Who Hopes In God Trusts God, Whom He Never Sees, To Bring Him To The Possession Of Things That Are Beyond Imagination.

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 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.

The Goal Of Fasting Is Inner Unity.

First, The Desert Is The Country Of Madness. Second, It Is The Refuge Of The Devil, Thrown Out Into The "wilderness Of Upper Egypt" To "wander In Dry Places." Thirst Drives Man Mad, And The Devil Himself Is Mad With A Kind Of Thirst For His Own Lost Excellence--lost Because He Has Immured Himself In It And Closed Out Everything Else. So The Man Who Wanders Into The Desert To Be Himself Must Take Care That He Does Not Go Mad And Become The Servant Of The One Who Dwells There In A Sterile Paradise Of Emptiness And Rage.

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

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.

Once You Have Grace," I Said To Him, "you Are Free. Without It, You Cannot Help Doing The Things You Know You Should Not Do, And That You Know You Don't Really Want To Do. But Once You Have Grace, You Are Free. When You Are Baptized, There Is No Power In Existence That Can Force You To Commit A Sin-nothing That Will Be Able To Drive You To It Against Your Own Conscience. And If You Merely Will It, You Will Be Free Forever, Because The Strength Will Be Given You, As Much As You Need, And As Often As You Ask, And As Soon As You Ask, And Generally Long Before You Ask For It, Too.

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 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.

As Long As We Are On Earth, The Love That Unites Us Will Bring Us Suffering By Our Very Contact With One Another, Because This Love Is The Resetting Of A Body Of Broken Bones. Even Saints Cannot Live With Saints On This Earth Without Some Anguish. There Are Two Things Which Men Can Do About The Pain Of Disunion With Other Men. They Can Love Or They Can Hate.

God Utters Me Like A Word Containing A Partial Thought Of Him. A Word Will Never Be Able To Comprehend The Voice That Utters It. But If I Am True To The Concept That God Utters In Me, If I Am True To The Thought Of Him That I Was Meant To Embody, I Shall Be Full Of His Actuality And Find Him Everywhere In Myself, And Find Myself Nowhere.

...love Triumphs, At Least In This Life, Not By Eliminating Evil Once For All, But By Resisting And Overcoming It Anew Every Day.

Others Can Give You A Name Or A Number, But They Can Never Tell You Who You Really Are. That Is Something You Yourself Can Only Discover From Within.

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.

What We Have To Be Is What We Are.

A Man Can Radically Change His Life And Attain To A Deeper Meaning, A More Perfect Integration, A More Complete Fulfillment, A More Total Liberty Of Spirit Than Are Possible In The Routines Of A Purely Active Existence Centered On Money-making.

Love Not Only Prefers The Good Of Another To My Own, But It Does Not Even Compare The Two.

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

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

Even The Darkest Moments Of The Liturgy Are Filled With Joy, And Ash Wednesday, The Beginning Of The Lenten Fast, Is A Day Of Happiness, A Christian Feast.

If You Have Never Had Any Distractions You Don't Know How To Pray.

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

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.

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

There Are Crimes Which No One Would Commit As An Individual Which He Willingly And Bravely Commits When Acting In The Name Of His Society, Because He Has Been (too Easily) Convinced That Evil Is Entirely Different When It Is Done 'for The Common Good.'...one Might Point To The Way In Which Racial Hatreds And Even Persecution Are Admitted By People Who Consider Themselves, And Perhaps In Some Sense Are, Kind, Tolerant, Civilized And Even Humane.

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.

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.

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

One Might Say I Have Decided To Marry The Silence Of The Forest. The Sweet Dark Warmth Of The Whole World Will Have To Be My Wife.

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.

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

For Although God Is Right With Us And In Us And Out Of Us And All Through Us, We Have To Go On Journeys To Find Him.

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

Unconditional Love

In Silence God Ceases To Be An Object And Becomes An Experience.

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.

The Devil Makes Many Disciples By Preaching Against Sin. He Convinces Them That The Great Evil Of Sin, Induces A Crisis Of Guilt By Which “god Is Satisfied," And After That He Lets Them Spend The Rest Of Their Lives Meditating On The Intense Sinfulness And Evident Reprobation Of Other Men.

Christ Is Born To Us Today, In Order That He May Appear To The Whole World Through Us.

Our Thought Should Not Merely Be An Answer To What Someone Else Has Just Said. Or What Someone Else Might Have Said. Our Interior World Must Be More Than An Echo Of The Words Of Someone Else. There Is No Point In Being A Moon To Somebody Else's Sun, Still Less Is There Any Justification For Our Being Moons Of One Another, And Hence Darkness To One Another, Not One Of Us Being A True Sun.

To Be Truly Catholic Is Not Merely To Be Correct According To An Abstractly Universal Standard Of Truth, But Also And Above All To Be Able To Enter Into The Problems And The Joys Of All, To Understand All, To Be All Things To All.

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.

How Deluded We Sometimes Are By The Clear Notions We Get Out Of Books. They Make Us Think That We Really Understand Things Of Which We Have No Practical Knowledge At All.

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

Decisions You Make

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.

The Gate Of Heaven Is Everywhere.

Gates Of Heaven

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.

Teach Me To Take All Grace / And Spring It Into Blades Of Act, / Grow Spears And Sheaves Of Charity, / While Each New Instant, (new Eternity) / Flowering With Clean And Individual Circumstance, / Speaks Me The Whisper Of [god's] Consecrating Spirit. / Then Will Obedience Bring Forth New Incarnations / Shining To God With The Features Of [the Lord's] Christ.

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.

Perhaps I Am Stronger Than I Think.

Very Well, Then: Why Are You Attached To Any One Book, Or To The Words And Ways Of One Saint When He Himself Tells You To Let Them Go And Walk In Simplicity? To Hang On To Him As If To Make A Method Of Him Is To Contradict Him And To Go In The Opposite Direction To The One In Which He Would Have You Travel.

My Best Writing Has Always Been In Journals.

Spread Abroad The Name Of Jesus In Humility And With A Meek Heart; Show Him Your Feebleness, And He Will Become Your Strength.

For Power Can Guarantee The Interests Of Some Men But It Can Never Foster The Good Of Man. Power Always Protects The Good Of Some At The Expense Of All The Others. Only Love Can Attain And Preserve The Good Of All. Any Claim To Build The Security Of All On Force Is A Manifest Imposture.

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

To Know The Cross Is Not Merely To Know Our Own Sufferings. For The Cross Is The Sign Of Salvation, And No Man Is Saved By His Own Sufferings. To Know The Cross Is To Know That We Are Saved By The Sufferings Of Christ; More, It Is To Know The Love Of Christ Who Underwent Suffering And Death In Order To Save Us. It Is, Then, To Know Christ.

When I Pray For Peace, I Pray Not Only That The Enemies Of My Own Country May Cease To Want War, But Above All That My Country Will Cease To Do The Things That Make War Inevitable.

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.

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

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

It Is A Glorious Destiny To Be A Member Of The Human Race, Now I Realize What We All Are . If Only They [people] Could All See Themselves As They Really Are I Suppose The Big Problem Would Be That We Would Fall Down And Worship Each Other At The Center Of Our Being Is A Point Of Nothingness Which Is Untouched By Sin And By Illusions, A Point Of Pure Truth This Little Point Is The Pure Glory Of God In Us. It Is In Everybody.

It Might Be Good To Open Our Eyes And See.

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

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.

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.

Because Of Their Enmity You Will Be Left Alone. They Will Cast You Out And Forsake You.

If You Write For God You Will Reach Many Men And Bring Them Joy. If You Write For Men--you May Make Some Money And You May Give Someone A Little Joy And You May Make A Noise In The World, For A Little While. If You Write For Yourself, You Can Read What You Yourself Have Written And After Ten Minutes You Will Be So Disgusted That You Will Wish That You Were Dead.

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!

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 World As Pure Object Is Something That Is Not There. It Is Not A Reality Outside Us For Which We Exist....it Is A Living And Self-creating Mystery Of Which I Am Myself A Part, To Which I Am Myself, My Own Unique Door.

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

The Lord Did Not Create Suffering. Pain And Death Came Into The World With The Fall Of Man. But After Man Had Chosen Suffering In Preference To The Joys Of Union With God, The Lord Turned Suffering Itself Into A Way By Which Man Could Come To The Perfect Knowledge Of God.

There Is In All Visible Things An Invisible Fecundity, A Dimmed Light, A Meek Namelessness, A Hidden Wholeness. This Mysterious Unity And Integrity Is Wisdom, The Mother Of Us All, "natura Naturans." There Is In All Things An Inexhaustible Sweetness And Purity, A Silence That Is A Fountain Of Action And Joy. It Rises Up In Wordless Gentleness, And Flows Out To Me From The Unseen Roots Of All Created Being.

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.

Take More Time, Cover Less Ground.

A Daydream Is An Evasion.

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.

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!

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

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.

This Is The Crucifixion Of Christ: In Which He Dies Again And Again In The Individuals Who Were Made To Share The Joy And Freedom Of His Grace, And Who Deny Him.

Crucifixion Of Christ

I Came With The Notion Of Perhaps Saying Something For Monks And To Monks Of All Religions Because I Am Supposed To Be A Monk. ... My Dear Brothers, We Are Already One. But We Imagine That We Are Not. And What We Have To Recover Is Our Original Unity. What We Have To Be Is What We Are

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.

The Man Who Sweats Under His Mask, Whose Role Makes Him Itch With Discomfort, Who Hates The Division In Himself, Is Already Beginning To Be Free.

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.

My God, I Pray Better To You By Breathing And Walking Than By Talking, Just As In Choir I Sing Best When I Am Thinking About Something Else, Or Better Still, Praying.

The Silence Of The Spheres Is The Music Of A Wedding Feast. The More We Persist In Misunderstanding The Phenomena Of Life, The More We Analyze Them Out Into Strange Finalities And Complex Purposes Of Our Own, The More We Involve Ourselves In Sadness. But It Does Not Matter Much Because No Despair Of Ours Can Alter The Reality Of Things, Or Stain The Joy Of The Cosmic Dance Which Is Always There.

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

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.

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

It Is By Desiring To Grow In Love That We Receive The Holy Spirit, And The Thirst For More Charity Is The Effect Of This More Abundant Reception.

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

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

Love One Another

The Whole World Is Charged With The Glory Of God And I Feel Fire And Music Under My Feet.

The Friends Of Job Appear On The Scene As Advisers And "consolers," Offering Job The Fruits Of Their Moral Scientia. But When Job Insists That His Sufferings Have No Explanation And That He Cannot Discover The Reason For Them Through Conventional Ethical Concepts, His Friends Turn Into Accusers, And Curse Job As A Sinner. Thus, Instead Of Consolers, They Become Torturers By Virtue Of Their Very Morality, And In So Doing, While Claiming To Be Advocates Of God, They Act As Instruments Of The Devil.

Today Will Never Come Again.

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.

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.

What Can We Gain By Sailing To The Moon If We Are Not Able To Cross The Abyss That Separates Us From Ourselves? This Is The Most Important Of All Voyages Of Discovery, And Without It, All The Rest Are Not Only Useless, But Disastrous.

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

Just Remaining Quietly In The Presence Of God, Listening To Him, Being Attentive To Him, Requires A Lot Of Courage And Know-how.

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.

Ultimately Faith Is The Only Key To The Universe. The Final Meaning Of Human Existence, And The Answers To The Questions On Which All Our Happiness Depends Cannot Be Found In Any Other Way.

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

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

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

There Were Only A Few Shepherds At The First Bethlehem. The Ox And The Donkey Understood More Of The First Christmas Than The High Priests In Jerusalem. And It Is The Same Today.

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.

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.

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

Love Is The Epiphany Of God In Our Poverty.

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

For Our Duties And Our Needs, In All The Fundamental Things For Which We Were Created, Come Down In Practice To The Same Thing.

Imagination Has The Creative Task Of Making Symbols, Joining Things Together In Such A Way That They Throw New Light On Each Other And On Everything Around Them. The Imagination Is A Discovering Faculty, A Faculty For Seeing Relationships, For Seeing Meanings That Are Special And Even Quite New.

We Do Not Exist For Ourselves.

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.

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

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.

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.

Wheels Of Fire, Cosmic, Rich, Full-bodied Honest Victories Over Desperation.

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

It Is In Deep Solitude That I Find The Gentleness With Which I Can Truly Love My Brothers. The More Solitary I Am, The More Affection I Have For Them. It Is Pure Affection, And Filled With Reverance For The Solitude Of Others. Solitude And Silence Teach Me To Love My Brothers For What They Are, Not For What They Say.

The Humble Person Receives Praise The Way A Clean Window Takes The Light Of The Sun. The Truer And More Intense The Light Is, The Less You See Of The Glass.

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.

Do Not Be One Of Those Who, Rather Than Risk Failure, Never Attempts Anything.

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.

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.

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

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

To Say That I Am Made In The Image Of God Is To Say That Love Is The Reason For My Existence, For God Is Love. Love Is My True Identity. Selflessness Is My True Self. Love Is My True Character. Love Is My Name.

The Solution Of The Problem Of Life Is Life Itself. Life Is Not Attained By Reason And Analysis But First Of All By Living.

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

True Encounter With Christ Liberates Something In Us, A Power We Did Not Know We Had, A Hope, A Capacity For Life, A Resilience, An Ability To Bounce Back When We Thought We Were Completely Defeated, A Capacity To Grow And Change, A Power Of Creative Transformation.

Finally I Am Coming To The Conclusion That My Highest Ambition Is To Be What I Already I Am.

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

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.

To Be Unknown To God Is Altogether Too Much Privacy.

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

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.

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.

Each Particular Being, In Its Individuality, Its Concrete Nature And Entity, With All Its Own Characteristics And Its Private Qualities And Its Own Inviolable Identity, Gives Glory To God By Being Precisely What He Wants It To Be Here And Now, In The Circumstances Ordained For It By His Love And His Infinite Art.

Let Me Say This Before Rain Becomes A Utility That They Can Plan And Distribute For Money. By "they" I Mean The People Who Cannot Understand That Rain Is A Festival, Who Do Not Appreciate Its Gratuity, Who Think That What Has No Price Has No Value, That What Cannot Be Sold Is Not Real, So That The Only Way To Make Something Actual Is To Place It On The Market. The Time Will Come When They Will Sell You Even Your Rain. At The Moment It Is Still Free, And I Am In It. I Celebrate Its Gratuity And Its Meaninglessness.

By Reading The Scriptures I Am So Renewed That All Nature Seems Renewed Around Me And With Me. The Sky Seems To Be A Pure, A Cooler Blue, The Trees A Deeper Green. The Whole World Is Charged With The Glory Of God And I Feel Fire And Music Under My Feet.

That Is God's Call To Us - Simply To Be People Who Are Content To Live Close To Him And To Renew The Kind Of Life In Which The Closeness Is Felt And Experienced.

The Problem Today Is That There Are No Deserts, Only Dude Ranches.

The Least Of The Work Of Learning Is Done In Classrooms.

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.

The Root Of War Is Fear.

We Are Not Converted Only Once In Our Lives But Many Times And This Endless Series Of Conversions And Inner Revolutions Leads To Our Transformation.

Prayer Is Not So Much A Way To Find God As A Way Of Resting In Him...who Loves Us, Who Is Near To Us.

When Ambition Ends, Happiness Begins.

Our Knowledge Of God Is Perfected By Gratiitude: We Are Thankful And Rejoice In The Experience Of The Truth That He Is Love.

Knowledge Of God

We Are Not At Peace With Others Because We Are Not At Peace With Ourselves, And We Are Not At Peace With Ourselves Because We Are Not At Peace With God

Humility Is The Surest Sign Of Strength.

Who Is Willing To Be Satisfied With A Job That Expresses All His Limitations? He Will Accept Such Work Only As A 'means Of Livelihood' While He Waits To Discover His 'true Vocation'. The World Is Full Of Unsuccessful Businessmen Who Still Secretly Believe They Were Meant To Be Artists Or Writers Or Actors In The Movies.

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 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.

This Is The Greatest Stumbling Block In Our Spiritual Discipline, Which, In Actuality, Consists Not In Getting Rid Of The Self But In Realizing The Fact That There Is No Such Existence From The First.

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.

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

Our Technological Society Has No Longer Any Place In It For Wisdom That Seeks Truth For Its Own Sake, That Seeks The Fullness Of Being, That Seeks To Rest In An Intuition Of The Very Ground Of All Being. Without Wisdom, The Apparent Opposition Of Action And Contemplation, Of Work And Rest, Of Involvement And Detachment, Can Never Be Resolved.

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.

For If I Am To Love Truly And Freely, I Must Be Able To Give Something That Is Truly My Own To Another. If My Heart Does Not First Belong To Me, How Can I Give It To Another?

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

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

There Are Days When I Am Convinced That Heaven Starts Already, Now, In This Ordinary Life Just As It Is, In All Its Incompleteness, Yet, This Is Where Heaven Starts.. See Within Yourself, If You Can Find It. I Walked Through The Field In Front Of The House, Lots Of Swallows Flying, Everywhere! Some Very Near Me..it Was Magical. "we Are Already One, Yet We Know It Not.

We Have What We Seek, It Is There All The Time, And If We Give It Time, It Will Make Itself Known To Us.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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!

I See No Contradiction Between Buddhism And Christianity ... I Intend To Become As Good A Buddhist As I Can.

I Shall Lead You Through The Loneliness, The Solitude You Will Not Understand; But It Is My Shortcut To Your Soul.

The Desire To Kill Is Like The Desire To Attack Another With An Ingot Of Red -hot Iron: I Have To Pick Up The Incandescent Metal And Burn My Own Hand While Burning The Other. Hate Itself Is The Seed Of Death In My Own Heart, While It Seeks The Death Of The Other.

We Thank Him Less By Words Than By The Serene Happiness Of Silent Acceptance. It Is Our Emptiness In The Presence Of His Reality, Our Silence In The Presence Of His Infinitely Rich Silence, Our Joy In The Bosom Of The Serene Darkness In Which His Light Holds Us Absorbed, It Is All This That Praises Him.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

If We Live With Possibilities We Are Exiles From The Present Which Is Given Us By God To Be Our Own, Homeless And Displaced In A Future Or A Past Which Are Not Ours Because They Are Always Beyond Our Reach. The Present Is Our Right Place, And We Can Lay Hands On Whatever It Offers Us.

Before We Can Realize Who We Really Are, We Must Become Conscious Of The Fact That The Person We Think We Are, Here And Now, Is At Best An Impostor And A Stranger.

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