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We Who Claim To Love Peace And Justice Must Always Be Careful That We Do Not Use Our Righteousness To Provoke The Violent, And In This Way Bring About The Conflict For Which We, Too, Like Other Men, Are Hungering In Secret, And With Suppressed Barbarity.

-Thomas Merton

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We Who Claim To

Thomas Merton

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We Who Claim To Love Peace And Justice Must Always Be Careful That We Do Not Use Our Righteousness To Provoke The Violent, And In This Way Bring About The Conflict For Which We, Too, Like Other Men, Are Hungering In Secret, And With Suppressed Barbarity.

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To Be A Saint Is To Be Yourself.

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

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

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.

The Gate Of Heaven Is Everywhere.

Gates Of Heaven

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Happiness Is Not A Matter Of Intensity But Of Balance And Order And Rhythm And Harmony.

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 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.

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.

Peace Cannot Be Built On Exclusivism, Absolutism, And Intolerance. But Neither Can It Be Built On Vague Liberal Slogans And Pious Programs Gestated In The Smoke Of Confabulation. There Can Be No Peace On Earth Without The Kind Of Inner Change That Brings Man Back To His "right Mind." P. 31

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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

It Might Be Good To Open Our Eyes And See.

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?

The Peculiar Grace Of A Shaker Chair Is Due To The Fact That It Was Made By Someone Capable Of Believing That An Angel Might Come And Sit On It.

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 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.

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

Only The Man Who Has Had To Face Despair Is Really Convinced That He Needs Mercy. Those Who Do Not Want Mercy Never Seek It. It Is Better To Find God On The Threshold Of Despair Than To Risk Our Lives In A Complacency That Has Never Felt The Need Of Forgiveness. A Life That Is Without Problems May Literally Be More Hopeless Than One That Always Verges On Despair.

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

Pride Makes Us Artificial And Humility Makes Us Real.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

We Do Not Exist For Ourselves.

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.

For Me To Be A Saint Means To Be Myself.

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

Grains Of Error Planted Innocently In A Well-kept Greenhouse Can Become Giant Poisonous Trees.

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.

Zen Enriches No One. There Is No Body To Be Found. The Birds May Come And Circle For A While In The Place Where It Is Thought To Be. But They Soon Go Elsewhere. When They Are Gone, The "nothing," The "no-body" That Was There, Suddenly Appears. That Is Zen. It Was There All The Time But The Scavengers Missed It, Because It Was Not Their Kind Of Prey.

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

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

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

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.

One Of The First Things To Learn If You Want To Be A Contemplative Is To Mind Your Own Business. Nothing Is More Suspicious, In A Man Who Seems Holy, Than An Impatient Desire To Reform Other Men.

Mind Your Own Business

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!

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.

October Is A Fine And Dangerous Season In America. It Is Dry And Cool And The Land Is Wild With Red And Gold And Crimson, And All The Lassitudes Of August Have Seeped Out Of Your Blood, And You Are Full Of Ambition. It Is A Wonderful Time To Begin Anything At All.

A Life Is Either All Spiritual Or Not Spiritual At All. No Man Can Serve Two Masters. Your Life Is Shaped By The End You Live For. You Are Made In The Image Of What You Desire.

A Superficial Freedom To Wander Aimlessly Here Or There, To Taste This Or That, To Make A Choice Of Distractions, Is Simply A Sham. It Claims To Be A Freedom Of "choice" When It Has Evaded The Basic Task Of Discovering Who It Is That Chooses.

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

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

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

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

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

We Cannot Achieve Greatness Unless We Lose All Interest In Being Great.

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.

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

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

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 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.

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.

A Humble Man Is Not Afraid Of Failure. In Fact, He Is Not Afraid Of Anything, Even Himself, Since Perfect Humility Implies Perfect Confidence In The Power Of God.

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

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.

It Is Not Merely Our Own Desire But The Desire Of Christ In His Spirit That Drives Us To Grow In Love. Those Who Seldom Or Never Feel In Their Hearts The Desire For The Love Of God And Other Men, And Who Do Not Thirst For The Pure Waters Of Desire Which Are Poured Out In Us By The Strong, Living God, Are Usually Those Who Have Drunk From Other Rivers Or Have Dug For Themselves Broken Cisterns.

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

Unconditional Love

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

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

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 Simplicity That All This Presupposes Is Not Easy To Attain. I Find That My Life Constantly Threatens To Become Complex And Divisive. A Life Of Prayer Is Basically A Very Simple Life. This Simplicity, However, Is The Result Of Asceticism And Effort: It Is Not A Spontaneous Simplicity.

What We Have To Be Is What We Are.

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

Show Us Your Christ, Lady, After This Our Exile, Yes: But Show Him To Us Also Now, Show Him To Us Here, While We Are Still Wanderers.

Perhaps I Am Stronger Than I Think.

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.

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

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

Ordinary Things

Persons Are Not Known By Intellect Alone, Not By Principles Alone, But Only By Love. 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. It Is Only This Realization That Can Open To Us The Real Nature Of Our Duty, And Of Right Action.

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

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!

Since No Man Ever Can, Or Could, Live By Himself And For Himself Alone, The Destinies Of Thousands Of Other People Were Bound To Be Affected, Some Remotely, But Some Very Directly And Near-at-hand, By My Own Choices And Decisions And Desires, As My Own Life Would Also Be Formed And Modified According To Theirs.

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.

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

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 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.

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

Nonviolence Seeks To ‘win’ Not By Destroying Or Even By Humiliating The Adversary, But By Convincing [the Adversary] That There Is A Higher And More Certain Common Good Than Can Be Attained By Bombs And Blood. Nonviolence, Ideally Speaking, Does Not Try To Overcome The Adversary By Winning Over [them], But To Turn [them] From An Adversary Into A Collaborator By Winning [them] Over.

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

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

If You Have Love You Will Do All Things Well.

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

Compassion Is The Keen Awareness Of The Interdependence Of All Things.

Loving Kindness

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

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.

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

Gratitude Takes Nothing For Granted, Is Never Unresponsive, Is Constantly Awakening To New Wonder.

We Refuse Love, And Reject Society, In So Far As It Seems, In Our Own Perverse Imagination, To Imply Some Obscure Kind Of Humiliation

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

How Can I Be Sincere If I Am Constantly Changing My Mind To Conform With The Shadow Of What I Think Others Expect Of Me?

Stop Asking Yourself Questions That Have No Meaning. Or If They Have, You'll Find Out When You Need To -- Find Out Both The Questions And The Answers.

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.

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

Anxiety Is The Mark Of Spiritual Insecurity.

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.

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.

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.

It Is By The Holy Spirit That We Love Those Who Are United To Us In Christ. The More Plentifully We Have Received Of The Spirit Of Christ, The More Perfectly We Are Able To Love Them: And The More We Love Them The More We Receive The Spirit. It Is Clear, However, That Since We Love Them By The Spirit Who Is Given To Us By Jesus, It Is Jesus Himself Who Loves Them In Us.

There Is Only One Problem On Which All My Existence, My Peace, My Happiness Depend: To Discover Myself In Discovering God. If I Find Him I Will Find Myself And If I Find My True Self I Will Find Him.

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.

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.

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.

Whose Silence Are You?

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

True Relationship

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.

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

Each One Of Us Has Some Kind Of Vocation. We Are All Called By God To Share In His Life And In His Kingdom. Each One Of Us Is Called To A Special Place In The Kingdom. If We Find That Place We Will Be Happy. If We Do Not Find It, We Can Never Be Completely Happy. For Each One Of Us, There Is Only One Thing Necessary: To Fulfill Our Own Destiny, According To God's Will, To Be What God Wants Us To Be.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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. Not That We Discover A New Unity. We Discover An Older Unity. My Dear Brothers [and Sisters], 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.

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.

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.

Humility Is The Surest Sign Of Strength.

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

To Desire Him To Be Merciful To Us Is To Acknowledge Him As God. To Seek His Pity When We Deserve No Pity Is To Ask Him To Be Just With A Justice So Holy That It Knows No Evil And Shows Mercy To Everyone Who Does Not Fly From Him In Despair.

Acknowledge Him

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

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.

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

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.

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

The Geographical Pilgrimage Is The Symbolic Acting Out An Inner Journey. The Inner Journey Is The Interpolation Of The Meanings And Signs Of The Outer Pilgrimage. One Can Have One Without The Other. It Is Best To Have Both.

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.

For Language To Have Meaning, There Must Be Intervals Of Silence Somewhere, To Divide Word From Word And Utterance From Utterance. He Who Retires Into Silence Does Not Necessarily Hate Language. Perhaps It Is Love And Respect For Language Which Imposes Silence Upon Him. For The Mercy Of God Is Not Heard In Words Unless It Is Heard, Both Before And After The Words Are Spoken, In Silence.

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.

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

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

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

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

The Logic Of Worldly Success Rests On A Fallacy: The Strange Error That Our Perfection Depends On The Thoughts And Opinions And Applause Of Other Men! A Weird Life It Is, Indeed, To Be Living Always In Somebody Else's Imagination, As If That Were The Only Place In Which One Could At Last Become Real!

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

Decisions You Make

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.

My Life Is ... A Mystery Which I Do Not Attempt To Really Understand, As Though 1 Were Led By The Hand In A Night Where I See Nothing, But Can Fully Depend On The Love And Protection Of Him Who Guides Me.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

Every Other Man Is A Piece Of Myself, For I Am A Part And A Member Of Mankind.

People Are In A Hurry To Magnify Themselves By Imitating What Is Popular- And Too Lazy To Think Of Anything Better.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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?

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.

Love In Fact Is The Spiritual Life, And Without It All The Other Exercises Of The Spirit, However Lofty, Are Emptied Of Content And Become Mere Illusions.

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

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

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

The God Of Peace Is Never Glorified By Human Violence.

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

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

Today The Artist Has Inherited The Combined Functions Of Hermit, Pilgrim, Prophet, Priest, Shaman, Sorcerer, Soothsayer, Alchemist.

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

Happiness And Love

The Question Of Love Is One That Cannot Be Evaded. Whether Or Not You Claim To Be Interested In It From The Moment You Are Alive You Are Bound To Be Concerned With Love Because Love Is Not Just Something That Happens To You: It Is A Certain Special Way Of Being Alive. Love Is In Fact An Intensification Of Life A Completeness A Fullness A Wholeness Of Life.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Contemplation Is Not And Cannot Be A Function Of This External Self. There Is An Irreducible Opposition Between The Deep Transcendent Self That Awakens Only In Contemplation, And The Superficial, External Self Which We Commonly Identify With The First Person Singular.

We Stumble And Fall Constantly, Even When We Are Most Enlightened.

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

For Now, Oh My God, It Is To You Alone That I Can Talk, Because Nobody Else Will Understand. I Cannot Bring Any Other Man On This Earth Into The Cloud Where I Dwell In Your Light, That Is, Your Darkness, Where I Am Lost And Abashed. I Cannot Explain To Any Other Man The Anguish Which Is Your Joy Nor The Loss Which Is The Possession Of You, Nor The Distance From All Things Which Is The Arrival In You, Nor The Death Which Is The Birth In You Because I Do Not Know Anything About It Myself And All I Know Is That I Wish It Were Over - I Wish It Were Begun.

You Are Certainly One Of The Joys Of Life For All Who Have Ever Come Within A Mile Of You.

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 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

Action Is The Stream, And Contemplation Is The Spring.

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Christopher McCandless

Friedrich Nietzsche

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