Wednesday, April 29, 2020

hidden







The deep secrecy of my own being is often hidden from me 
by my own estimate of what I am. 
My idea of what I am is falsified by my admiration for what I do. 

And my illusions about myself are bred by contagion 
from the illusions of other men. 
We all seek to imitate one another’s imagined greatness.
If I do not know who I am, it is because 
I think I am the sort of person everyone around me wants to be. 

Perhaps I have never asked myself
 whether I really wanted to become 
what everybody else seems to want to become. 

Perhaps if I only realized that I do not admire
 what everyone seems to admire, 
I would really begin to live after all.

I would be liberated from the painful duty
 of saying what I really do not think 
and of acting in a way that betrays God’s truth
 and the integrity of my own soul.





~ Thomas Merton
 from No Man is an Island
art by Van Gogh




hidden beneath Van Gogh's Patch of Grass
a portrait is revealed





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