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

-Thomas Merton

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What Is The Use

Thomas Merton

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

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

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.

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

Living Is Not Thinking. Thought Is Formed And Guided By Objective Reality Outside Us. Living Is The Constant Adjustment Of Thought To Life And Life To Thought In Such A Way That We Are Always Growing, Always Experiencing New Things In The Old And Old Things In The New. Thus Life Is Always New.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Biggest Disease In North America Is Busyness.

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

You Are Made In The Image Of What You Desire.

Spiritual Awakening

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

Contemplative Life

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

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

Contemplation In The Age Of Auschwitz And Dachau, Solovky And Karaganda Is Something Darker And More Fearsome Than Contemplation In The Age Of The Church Fathers. For That Very Reason, The Urge To Seek A Path Of Spiritual Light Can Be A Subtle Temptation To Sin. It Certainly Is Sin If It Means A Frank Rejection Of The Burden Of Our Age, An Escape Into Unreality And Spiritual Illusion, So As Not To Share The Misery Of Other Men.

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.

Contemplation Is The Loving Sense Of This Life, This Presence And This Eternity.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Action Is The Stream, And Contemplation Is The Spring.

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.

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?

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.

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

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Love Is Perfect In Proportion To It's Freedom.

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

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

Perhaps Peace Is Not, After All, Something You Work For, Or 'fight For.' It Is Indeed 'fighting For Peace' That Starts All The Wars. What, After All, Are The Pretexts Of All These Cold War Crises, But 'fighting For Peace?' Peace Is Something You Have Or Do Not Have. If You Are Yourself At Peace, Then There Is At Least Some Peace In The World. Then Share Your Peace With Everyone, And Everyone Will Be At Peace.

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

Love Is The Door To Eternity.

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

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

Teach Me To Go To The Country Beyond Words And Beyond Names.

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

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

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

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.

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 Solution Of The Problem Of Life Is Life Itself. Life Is Not Attained By Reasoning And Analysis, But First Of All By Living. For Until We Have Begun To Live Our Prudence Has No Material To Work On. And Until We Have Begun To Fail We Have No Way Of Working Out Our Success.

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

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.

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.

We Must Be True Inside, True To Ourselves, Before We Can Know A Truth That Is Outside Us. But We Make Ourselves True Inside By Manifesting The Truth As We See It.

When Ambition Ends, Happiness Begins.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Peace Demands The Most Heroic Labor And The Most Difficult Sacrifice. It Demands Greater Heroism Than War. It Demands Greater Fidelity To The Truth And A Much More Perfect Purity Of Conscience.

Every Moment And Every Event Of Everyman's Life On Earth Plants Something In His Soul. For Just As The Wind Carries Thousands Of Winged Seeds, So Each Moment Brings With It Germs Of Spiritual Vitality That Come To Rest Imperceptibly In The Minds And Wills Of Men.

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.

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

The End Of The World Will Be Legal.

End Of The World

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.

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.

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.

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?

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?

Love Is An Intensification Of Life.

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

Cupidity...takes Created Things For Ends In Themselves, Which They Are Not. The Will That Seeks Rest In Creatures For Their Own Sake Stops On The Way To Its True End, Terminates In A Value Which Does Not Exist, And Thus Frustrates All Its Deepest Capacities For Happiness And Peace.

The Whole World Has Risen In Christ... If God Is 'all In All,' Then Everything Is In Fact Paradise, Because It Is Filled With The Glory And Presence Of God, And Nothing Is Any More Separated From God.

Hurry Ruins Saints As Well As Artists.

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

The Illusion That Mechanical Progress Means Human Improvement ... Alienates Us From Our Own Being And Our Own Reality. It Is Precisely Because We Are Convinced That Our Life, As Such, Is Better If We Have A Better Car, A Better Tv Set, Better Toothpaste, Etc., That We Condemn And Destroy Our Own Reality And The Reality Of Our Natural Resources. Technology Was Made For Man, Not Man For Technology. In Losing Touch With Being And Thus With God, We Have Fallen Into A Senseless Idolatry Of Production And Consumption For Their Own Sakes.

We Do Not Exist For Ourselves.

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.

To Serve The God Of Love One Must Be Free, One Must Face The Terrible Responsibility Of The Decision To Love In Spite Of All Unworthiness Whether In Oneself Or In One's Neighbor.

It Is True That Neither The Ancient Wisdoms Nor The Modern Sciences Are Complete In Themselves. They Do Not Stand Alone. They Call For One Another. Wisdom Without Science Is Unable To Penetrate The Full Sapiential Meaning Of The Created And The Material Cosmos. Science Without Wisdom Leaves Man Enslaved To A World Of Unrelated Objects In Which There Is No Way Of Discovering (or Creating) Order And Deep Significance In Man's Own Pointless Existence. (p. 4)

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.

Music And Art And Poetry Attune The Soul To God.

Creation Was Given To People As A Clean Window Through Which The Light Of God Could Shine Into People's Souls. Sun And Moon, Night And Day, Rain, Sea, The Crops, The Flowering Tree, All These Things Were Transparent. They Spoke To People Not Of Themselves But Only Of Him Who Made Them. Nature Was Symbolic. But The Progressive Degradation Of Humans Led Them Further And Further From This Truth. Nature Became Opaque.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Today Will Never Come Again.

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

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.

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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)

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

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

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.

Pride Makes Us Artificial And Humility Makes Us Real.

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

....it Is Of The Very Essence Of Christianity To Face Suffering And Death Not Because They Are Good, Not Because They Have Meaning, But Because The Resurrection Of Jesus Has Robbed Them Of Their Meaning.

My Lord God, I Have No Idea Where I Am Going. I Do Not See The Road Ahead Of Me. I Cannot Know For Certain Where It Will End. Nor Do I Really Know Myself, And The Fact That I Think That I Am Following Your Will Does Not Mean That I Am Actually Doing So. But I Believe That The Desire To Please You Does In Fact Please You. And I Hope I Have That Desire In All That I Am Doing.

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.

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.

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

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

In Order To Settle Down In The Quiet Of Our Own Being We Must Learn To Be Detached From The Results Of Our Own Activity. We Must Be Content To Live Without Watching Ourselves Live, To Work With Expecting Immediate Reward, To Love Without An Instant Satisfaction, And To Exist Without Any Special Recognition. It Is Only When We Are Detached From Ourselves That We Can Be At Peace With Ourselves.

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.

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

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

Ordinary Things

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

I Believe We Are Going To Have To Prepare Ourselves For The Difficult And Patient Task Of Outgrowing Rigid And Intransigent Nationalism, And Work Slowly Towards A World Federation Of Peaceful Nations. How Will This Be Possible? Don't Ask Me. I Don't Know. But Unless We Develop A Moral, Spiritual, And Political Wisdom That Is Proportionate To Our Technological Skill, Our Skill May End Us.

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

A Man Who Fails Well Is Greater Than One Who Succeeds Badly.

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

I Am Earth, Earth My Heart's Love Bursts With Hay And Flowers. I Am A Lake Of Blue Air In Which My Own Appointed Place Field And Valley Stand Reflected

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Am Against War, Against Violence, Against Violent Revolution, For Peaceful Settlement Of Differences, For Nonviolent But Nevertheless Radical Changes. Change Is Needed, And Violence Will Not Really Change Anything: At Most It Will Only Transfer Power From One Set Of Bull-headed Authorities To Another.

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.

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.

Self Improvement

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Humility Is The Surest Sign Of Strength.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

It Is Not Humility To Insist On Being Someone That You Are Not. It Is As Much As Saying That You Know Better Than God Who You Are And Who You Ought To Be. How Do You Expect To Arrive At The End Of Your Own Journey If You Take The Road To Another Man's City? How Do You Expect To Reach Your Own Perfection By Leading Somebody Else's Life? His Sanctity Will Never Be Yours; You Must Have The Humility To Work Out Your Own Salvation In A Darkness Where You Are Absolutely Alone.

For Me To Be A Saint Means To Be Myself.

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.

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

Mystical Experiences

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?

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

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.

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

The 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.

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

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.

As Long As I Continue To Take Myself Seriously, How Can I Consider Myself A Saint? How Can I Consider Myself A Contemplative? For The Self I Bother About Does Not Really Exist, Never Will, Never Did Except In My Own Imagination.

Love Is Our True Destiny.

The Goal Of Fasting Is Inner Unity.

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.

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