Here I am, another Sunday, another sacred space of faith and spiritual journey, more memories and reflections. There are times I don’t want to understand the course of our actions that affect other people similar to a “butterfly effect.” Still, … Continue reading
Tag Archives: Thomas Merton
The man in the sycamore tree.
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“If you want to identify me,” he says to the British officers who are questioning him, “ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think … Continue reading
Deepest level of communication is wordless
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I stand among you as one who offers a small message of hope, that first, 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, … Continue reading
Waiting in silence

“In the Dark” ~ Thanksgiving 2014
not one who prepares his mind
for a particular message that he
wants or expects to hear,
but is one who remains empty
because he knows that he can never
expect to anticipate the words
that will transform his
darkness into light. He does not demand
light instead of darkness. He waits on the Word of God
in silence,
and when he is “answered,”
it is not so much by a word
that burst into his silence. It is by his silence itself,
suddenly, inexplicably
revealing itself to him as
a word of great power,
full of the voice of God. Thomas Merton from Dialogues with Silence
Source: Parabola Fall 2004 page 71
Waking from a dream.
In March in 1958, the famous Christian monk Thomas Merton suddenly awakened. He recorded it this way in his journal:
“Yesterday, in Louisville, at the corner of 4th and Walnut, suddenly realized that I loved all the people and that none of them were, or, could be totally alien to me. As if waking from a dream—the dream of my separateness, of the ‘special’ vocation to be different….Thank God! Thank God! I am only another member of the human race, like all the rest of them. I have the immense joy of being a man!….”
Imagine having a transcendental experience that all you feel is love, that all people are “beautiful” and that everything is light. The feeling of euphoria stays for the longest time. It feels good and it feels unreal at the same time. You wanted your old self again and yet how do you do it when you don’t even know how you came to this state of mind. No, there is no hallucination. No, there is no mental illness. It was more of a spiritual emergence.
To come back to your previous disposition before is a blessing. Thank God, indeed.
In The Quiet
It is useless to try to make peace with ourselves by being pleased with everything we have done. 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 withdraw ourselves, to some extent, from the effects that are beyond our control and be content with the good will and the work that are the quiet expression of our inner life. We must be content to live without watching ourselves live, to work without expecting any immediate reward, to love without an instantaneous satisfaction, and to exist without any special recognition….
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.
~ Thomas Merton
How kind time is.
Welcome
The Master set out on a journey with one of his disciples. At the outskirts of the village they ran into the governor, who, mistakenly thinking they had come to welcome him to the village, said, “You really didn’t have to go to all this trouble to welcome me.”
“You are mistaken, your highness,” said the disciple. “We’re on a journey, but had we known you were coming we would have gone to even greater pains to welcome you.”
The Master did not say a word. Toward evening he said, “Did you have to tell him that we had not come to welcome him? Did you see how foolish he felt?”
“But had we not told him the truth, would we not have been guilty of deceiving him?”
“We would not have deceived him at all,” said the Master. “He would have deceived himself.”
Anthony de Mello, SJ
MORSEL: Our minds are like crows. They pick up everything that glitters, no matter how uncomfortable our nests get with all that metal in them. ~~Thomas Merton
The Insupportable Knowledge of Nothing
I studied and it
taught me nothing.
I learned it and soon
forgot everything else. Having forgotten, I
was burdened with
knowledge. The insupportable
knowledge of nothing. How sweet my life
would be if I were
wise! Wisdom is well known
when it is no longer
seen or thought of. Only then is
understanding
bearable.
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Pilgrim Progress Characters
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. I hope that I will never do anything
apart from that desire to please you.
And I know that if I do this,
you will lead me by the right road
though I may know nothing about it. Therefore, will I trust you always
though I may seem to be lost
and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear,
for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me
to make my journey alone. Related articles
- Study guide – Literature Pilgrim’s Progress
- A Song, A Book, My Name (3psbyseeker.wordpress.com)