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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.

-Thomas Merton

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There Are Days When

Thomas Merton

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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.

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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

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.

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

Memory Is Corrupted And Ruined By A Crowd Of Memories. If I Am Going To Have A True Memory, There Are A Thousand Things That Must First Be Forgotten. Memory Is Not Fully Itself When It Reaches Only Into The Past. A Memory That Is Not Alive To The Present Does Not Remember The Here And Now, Does Not Remember Its True Identity, Is Not Memory At All. He Who Remembers Nothing But Facts And Past Events, And Is Never Brought Back Into The Present, Is A Victim Of Amnesia.

This Act Of Total Surrender Is Not Merely A Fantastic Intellectual And Mystical Gamble; It Is Something Much More Serious. It Is An Act Of Love For This Unseen Person, Who, In The Very Gift Of Love By Which We Surrender Ourselves To His Reality Also Makes His Presence Known To Us.

When You Reread Your Journal You Find Out That Your Newest Discovery Is Something You Already Found Out Five Years Ago.

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

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.

Hurry Ruins Saints As Well As Artists.

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

Contemplative Life

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.

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

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.

Whose Silence Are You?

To Find Love I Must Enter Into The Sanctuary Where It Is Hidden, Which Is The Mystery Of God.

Consequently, The Truth Of God Lives In Our Souls More By The Power Of Superior Moral Courage Than By The Light Of An Eminent Intelligence. Indeed, Spiritual Intelligence Itself Depends On The Fortitude And Patience With Which We Sacrifice Ourselves For The Truth, As It Is Communicated To Our Lives Concretely In The Providential Will Of God

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.

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!

The Only Unhappiness Is Not To Love God.

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.

It Is A Glorious Destiny To Be A Member Of The Human Race, Though It Is A Race Dedicated To Many Absurdities And One Which Makes Many Terrible Mistakes.

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.

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.

Humility Is A Virtue, Not A Neurosis.

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.

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.

The Only Influence That Can Really Upset The Injustice And Iniquity Of Men Is The Power That Breathes In The Christian Tradition, Renewing Our Participation In The Life That Is The Light Of Men.

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.

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

Technology Is Not In Itself Opposed To Spirituality And To Religion. But It Presents A Great Temptation.

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.

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

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)

We Assume That Others Are Receiving The Kind Of Appreciation We Want For Ourselves, And We Proceed On The Assumption That Since We Are Not Loveable As We Are, We Must Become Lovable Under False Pretenses, As If We Were Something Better Than We Are.

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.

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 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.

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

Contemplative Living Is Living In True Relationship With Oneself, God, Others And Nature, Free Of The Illusions Of Separateness.

True Relationship

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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 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

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.

The Root Of War Is Fear.

The First Step Toward Finding God, Who Is Truth, Is To Discover The Truth About Myself: And If I Have Been In Error, This First Step To Truth Is The Discovery Of My Error.

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

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

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.

Pride Makes Us Artificial And Humility Makes Us Real.

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.

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

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

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

Decisions You Make

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.

We Have To Have A Deep, Patient Compassion For The Fears Of Others And Irrational Mania Of Those Who Hate Or Condemn Us.

God Has Left Sin In The World In Order That There May Be Forgiveness: Not Only The Secret Forgiveness By Which He Himself Cleanses Our Souls, But The Manifest Forgiveness By Which We Have Mercy On One Another And So Give Expression To The Fact That He Is Living, By His Mercy, In Our Own Hearts.

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.

To Be Unknown To God Is Altogether Too Much Privacy.

Stop Thinking And Start Looking.

Love Is Its Own Reward.

Unconditional Love

In The Spiritual Life There Is No Such Thing As An Indifference To Love Or Hate.

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.

Grace Is Not A Strange, Magic Substance Which Is Subtly Filtered Into Our Souls To Act As A Kind Of Spiritual Penicillin. Grace Is Unity, Oneness Within Ourselves, Oneness With God.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Perhaps I Am Stronger Than I Think.

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.

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

I Am Willing To Admit That Some People Might Live There For Years, Or Even A Lifetime, So Protected That They Never Sense The Sweet Stench Of Corruption That Is All Around Them - The Keen, Thin Scent Of Decay That Pervades Everything And Accuses With A Terrible Accusation The Superficial Youthfulness, The Abounding Undergraduate Noise, That Fills Those Ancient Buildings.

First Of All, Although Men Have A Common Destiny, Each Individual Also Has To Work Out His Own Personal Salvation For Himself In Fear And Trembling. We Can Help One Another To Find The Meaning Of Life No Doubt. But In The Last Analysis, The Individual Person Is Responsible For Living His Own Life And For "finding Himself." If He Persists In Shifting His Responsibility To Somebody Else, He Fails To Find Out The Meaning Of His Own Existence. You Cannot Tell Me Who I Am And I Cannot Tell You Who You Are. If You Do Not Know Your Own Identity, Who Is Going To Identify You?

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 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 Pleasure Of A Good Act Is Something To Be Remembered - Not In Order To Feed Our Complacency But In Order To Remind Us That Virtuous Actions Are Not Only Possible And Valuable, But That They Can Become Easier And More Delightful And More Fruitful Than The Acts Of Vice Which Oppose And Frustrate Them.

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 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.

To Those Who Have No Personal Experience Of This Revolutionary Aspect Of Christian Truth, But Who See Only The Outer Crust Of Dead, Human Conservatism That Tends To Form Around The Church The Way Barnacles Gather On The Hull Of A Ship, All This Talk About Dynamism Sounds Foolish.

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

The Greatest Need Of Our Time Is To Clean Out The Enormous Mass Of Mental And Emotional Rubbish That Clutters Our Minds

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Art Is Not An End In Itself. It Introduces The Soul Into A Higher Spiritual Order, Which It Expresses And In Some Sense Explains.

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.

You Are Made In The Image Of What You Desire.

Spiritual Awakening

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

If A Writer Is So Cautious That He Never Writes Anything That Cannot Be Criticized, He Will Never Be Able To Write Anything That Can Be Read. If You Want To Help Other People You Have Got To Make Up Your Mind To Write Things That Some Men Will Condemn.

If We Examine Ourselves Carefully We Shall See Most Of Us Have An Enormous Amount Of Unfinished Business...we Have To Be Free So That We Can Just Step Across The Line And That's It. That Is What Real Freedom Is.

Unfinished Business

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.

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

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

Anxiety Is The Mark Of Spiritual Insecurity.

If There Is No Silence Beyond And Within The Many Words Of Doctrine, There Is No Religion, Only A Religious Ideology. For Religion Goes Beyond Words And Actions, And Attains To The Ultimate Truth Only In Silence And Love.

The Biggest Disease In North America Is Busyness.

Finally I Am Coming To The Conclusion That My Highest Ambition Is To Be What I Already Am. That I Will Never Fulfill My Obligation To Surpass Myself Unless I First Accept Myself, And If I Accept Myself Fully In The Right Way, I Will Already Have Surpassed Myself.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

It Is In Deep Solitude And Silence That I Find The Gentleness With Which I Can Truly Love My Brother And Sister.

The Whole Aim Of Zen Is Not To Make Foolproof Statements About Experience, But To Come To Direct Grips With Reality Without The Mediation Of Logical Verbalizing.

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.

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.

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

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

Let Me Rest In Your Will And Be Silent. Then The Light Of Your Joy Will Warm My Life. Its Fire Will Burn In My Heart And Shine For Your Glory. This Is What I Live For. Amen, Amen.

If Our Life Is Poured Out In Useless Words, We Will Never Hear Anything, Never Become Anything, And In The End, Because We Have Said Everything Before We Had Anything To Say, We Shall Be Left Speechless At The Moment Of Our Greatest Decision.

Everything In Modern City Life Is Calculated To Keep Man From Entering Into Himself And Thinking About Spiritual Things. Even With The Best Of Intentions A Spiritual Man Finds Himself Exhausted And Deadened And Debased By The Constant Noise Of Machines And Loudspeakers, The Dead Air And The Glaring Lights Of Offices And Shops, The Everlasting Suggestion Of Advertising And Propaganda. The Whole Mechanism Of Modern Life Is Geared For A Flight From God And From The Spirit Into The Wilderness Of Neurosis.

To Be A Saint Is To Be Yourself.

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

No Matter How Ruined Man And His World May Seem To Be, And No Matter How Terrible Man's Despair May Become, As Long As He Continues To Be A Man His Very Humanity Continues To Tell Him That Life Has A Meaning.

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

The Very Contradictions In My Life Are In Some Ways Signs Of God's Mercy To Me.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Art Enables Us To Find Ourselves And Lose Ourselves At The Same Time.

Finding Yourself

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

I Can Only Become Perfectly Free By Serving The Will Of God.

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.

If We Are To Love Sincerely, And With Simplicity, We Must First Of All Overcome The Fear Of Not Being Loved.

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

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.

Our Idea Of God Tells Us More About Ourselves Than About Him.

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.

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.

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.

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.

After All, What Is Your Personal Identity? It Is What You Really Are, Your Real Self. None Of Us Is What He Thinks He Is, Or What Other People Think He Is, Still Less What His Passport Says He Is. And It Is Fortunate For Most Of Us That We Are Mistaken. We Do Not Generally Know What Is Good For Us. That Is Because, In St. Bernard's Language, Our True Personality Has Been Concealed Under The 'disguise' Of A False Self, The Ego, Whom We Tend To Worship In Place Of God.

Discovering Vocation Does Not Mean Scrambling Toward Some Prize Just Beyond My Reach But Accepting The Treasure Of True Self I Already Possess. Vocation Does Not Come From A Voice �out There� Calling Me To Be Something I Am Not. It Comes From A Voice �in Here� Calling Me To Be The Person I Was Born To Be, To Fulfill The Original Selfhood Given Me At Birth By God.

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.

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.

The Fruitfulness Of Our Lives Depends In Large Measure In Our Ability To Doubt Our Own Words And To Question The Value Of Our Own Work. The Man Who Completely Trusts His Own Estimate Of Himself Is Doomed To Sterility.

Love Is Our True Destiny. We Do Not Find The Meaning Of Life By Ourselves Alone - We Find It With Another.

But It Certainly Is A Wonderful Thing To Wake Up Suddenly In The Solitude Of The Woods And Look Up At The Sky And See The Utter Nonsense Of Everything Including All The Solemn Stuff Given Out By Professional Asses About The Spiritual Life; And Simply To Burst Out Laughing, And Laugh And Laugh, With The Sky And The Trees Because God Is Not In Words, And Not In Systems, And Not In Liturgical Movements, And Not In "contemplation" With A Big "c," Or In Asceticism Or In Anything Like That, Not Even In The Apostolate.

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.

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

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

The More You Try To Avoid Suffering, The More You Suffer, Because Smaller And More Insignificant Things Begin To Torture You, In Proportion To Your Fear Of Being Hurt. The One Who Does Most To Avoid Suffering Is, In The End, The One Who Suffers Most.

Insignificant Things

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.

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?

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.

The Artistic Experience, At Its Highest, Was Actually A Natural Analogue Of Mystical Experience. It Produced A Kind Of Intuitive Of Perception.

Mystical Experiences

If You Yourself Are At Peace, Then There Is At Least Some Peace In The World.

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

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

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?

What Do You Want To Want To Be, Anyway?" "i Don't Know; I Guess What I Want To Be Is A Good Catholic." "what You Should Say"--he Told Me--"what You Should Say Is That You Want To Be A Saint.

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

The Man Who Lives In Division Is Living In Death. He Cannot Find Himself Because He Is Lost; He Has Ceased To Be A Reality. The Person He Believes Himself To Be Is A Bad Dream.

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.

My Best Writing Has Always Been In Journals.

Love Is An Intensification Of Life.

To Be Ordinary Is Not A Choice: It Is The Usual Freedom Of Men Without Visions.

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.

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

Keeping A Journal Has Taught Me That There Is Not So Much New In Your Life As You Sometimes Think. When You Re-read Your Journal You Find Out That Your Latest Discovery Is Something You Already Found Out Five Years Ago. Still, It Is True That One Penetrates Deeper And Deeper Into The Same Ideas And The Same Experiences.

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

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

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.

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

In Order To Find God In Ourselves, We Must Stop Looking At Ourselves, Stop Checking And Verifying Ourselves In The Mirror Of Our Own Futility, And Be Content To Be In Him And To Do Whatever He Wills, According To Our Limitations, Judging Our Acts Not In The Light Of Our Own Illusions, But In The Light Of His Reality Which Is All Around Us In The Things And People We Live With.

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

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?

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.

His Justice Is The Love That Gives To Each One Of His Creatures The Gifts That His Mercy Has Previously Decreed. And His Mercy Is His Love, Doing Justice To Its Own Exigencies, And Renewing The Gift Which We Had Failed To Accept.

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

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