Spiritwalk
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Thomas Merton
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Contents
- Our real journey in life is interior;
- It is a matter of growth, deepening,
- and of an ever greater surrender
- to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts.
- Never was it more necessary to respond to that action.
- Prayer and love are learned in the hour
- when prayer becomes impossible
- and your heart has turned to stone.
- Hell is alienation from the true self,
- which is of God.
- If you do not know your own identity,
- who is going to identify you?
"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...
- And so it takes heroic humility to be yourself and to be nobody but the man,
- or the artist, that God intended you to be.
- You will be made to feel that your honesty is only pride.
- This is a serious temptation because you can never be sure
- whether you are being true to your true self or only building up a defense
- for the false personality that is the creature of your own appetite for esteem.
- But the greatest humility can be learned from the anguish
- of keeping your balance in such a position:
- of continuing to be yourself without getting tough about it
- and asserting your false self against the false selves
of other people."
Thomas Merton, The New Seeds of Contemplation, New Directions Publishing Co. 1961, p. 100-101
- The Thomas Merton Society of Great Britain and Ireland
- http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucylpmp/home.htm
- Essay: Thomas Merton's Contemplative Struggle: Bridging the Abyss to Find Freedom
by George A. Kilcourse, Jr.
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