Thursday, August 29, 2013

peace





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 crisis, 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.  Of course I realize that arguments
 like this can be used as a pretext for passivity, for indifferent 
acceptance of every iniquity.  Quietism leads to war as surely as 
anything does.  But I am not speaking of quietism, because quietism 
is not peace, nor is it the way to peace.



~ Thomas Merton
from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander



how




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.




~ Thomas Merton
from The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton