Showing posts with label Thomas Merton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thomas Merton. Show all posts

Monday, July 10, 2023

the clear deep source

 
 
 

 
 
 
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 with everything is to succumb to violence.
 
 The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his work for peace.
 It destroys the fruitfulness of his own work, 
because it kills the root of inner wisdom
 which makes work fruitful.
 
 
The time for contemplation is the spring that feeds our action, 
and our action will be as deep as the spring. 
We need time to allow the spirit to clear the obstacles 
– the clinging debris and mud – 
that keeps the spring from flowing freely from its clear, 
deep source. And we need time for the spring to 
overflow into insightful and compassionate action.


 
 
 
 
- Thomas Merton
from The Violence Of Modern Life
with thanks to Heron Dance Art Journal



Sunday, March 12, 2023

invitation






Sabbath observance invites us to stop. It invites us to rest. 
It asks us to notice that while we rest, 
the world continues without our help. 
It invites us to delight in the world’s beauty and abundance.


~ Wendell Berry



The time for contemplation is the spring that feeds our action, 
and our action will be as deep as the spring. 
We need time to allow the spirit to clear the obstacles 
– the clinging debris and mud – 
that keeps the spring from flowing freely from its clear, 
deep source. And we need time for the spring to 
overflow into insightful and compassionate action.


~ Thomas Merton


Friday, August 19, 2022

truth and partisanship









We are all convinced that we desire the truth above all. Nothing strange about this. 
It is natural to man, an intelligent being, to desire the truth.
 (I still dare to speak of man as 'an intelligent being'!')
 But actually, what we desire is not 'the truth' so much as 'to be in the right.'
 To seek the pure truth for its own sake may be natural to us, but we are not able to act
 always in this respect according to our nature. What we seek is not the pure truth,
 but the partial truth that justifies our prejudices, our limitations, our selfishness. 
This is not 'the truth.' It is only an argument strong enough to prove us 'right.'
 And usually our desire to be right is correlative to our conviction that 
somebody else (perhaps everybody else) is wrong.

Why do we want to prove them wrong? Because we need them to be wrong.
 For if they are wrong, and we are right, then our untruth becomes truth: 
our selfishness becomes justice and virtue: our cruelty and lust cannot be fairly condemned.
 We can rest secure in the fiction we have determined to embrace as 'truth.' 
What we desire is not the truth, but rather that our lie should be proved 'right,' 
and our iniquity be vindicated as 'just.' 
This is what we have done to pervert our natural, instinctive appetite for truth.

No wonder we hate. No wonder we are violent.
 No wonder we exhaust ourselves in preparing for war! 
And in doing so, of course, we offer the enemy another reason to believe that he is right, 
that he must arm, that he must get ready to destroy us. Our own lie provides the foundation
 of truth on which he erects his own lie, and the two lies together react to produce hatred, murder, disaster.




~ Thomas Merton
from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
art by Picasso
.

Wednesday, July 20, 2022

unnameable







There is no where in you a paradise that is no place 
and there
You do not enter except without a story.

To enter there is to become unnameable.

Whoever is there is homeless for he has no door and 
no identity with which to go out and to come in.

Whoever is nowhere is nobody, and therefore cannot
exist except as unborn:
No disguise will avail him anything

Such a one is neither lost nor found.

But he who has an address is lost.

They fall, they fall into apartments and are securely 
established!

They find themselves in streets.  They are licensed
To proceed from place to place
They now know their own names
They can name several friends and know
Their own telephones must some time ring.

If all telephones ring at once, if all names are shouted
at once and all cars crash at one crossing:
If all cities explode and fly away in dust

Yet identities refuse to be lost.  There is a name and 
number for everyone.

There is a definite place for bodies, there are pigeon
holes for ashes:
Such security can business buy!

Who would dare to go nameless in so secure a universe?
Yet, to tell the truth, only the nameless are at home in it.

They bear with them in the center of nowhere the 
unborn flower of nothing:
This is the paradise tree.  It must remain unseen until
words end and arguments are silent.





~ Thomas Merton
from The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton




Sunday, December 19, 2021

the hope of results







Do not depend on the hope of results. 
… you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless 
and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. 

As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results
 but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. 





~ Thomas Merton
in a letter to Jim Forest dated February 21, 1966, 
reproduced in The Hidden Ground of Love: Letters by Thomas Merton
art by Winslow Homer




the beginning of love







.


The beginning of love 
is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, 
and not to twist them to fit our own image. 


Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.








~ Thomas Merton
sketch by the author





the secret beauty





.

 
 
 
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.
 
 
 
 
 
~ Thomas Merton 
photo by konrad gos

.

Tuesday, October 5, 2021

not lose myself

 
 
 


 
 
 When I am not present to myself, 
then I am only aware of that half of me, 
that mode of my being which turns outward to created things.

And then it is possible for me to lose myself among them. 
Then I no longer feel the deep secret pull of the gravitation of love
 which draws my inward self toward God.

My will and my intelligence lose their command of the other faculties. 
My senses, my imagination, my emotions, scatter to pursue
 their various quarries all over the face of the earth.

Recollection brings them home. It brings the outward self into line 
with the inward spirit, and makes my whole being answer the deep
 pull of love that reaches down into the mystery of God.
 
 In order to be recollected in action, 
I must not lose myself in action.
In order to keep acting,
I must not lose myself in recollection.
 
 
 
 
~ Thomas Merton
 from No Man is an Island
 with thanks to Love is a Place


 

Friday, August 27, 2021

desire the truth?

 
 
 



We are all convinced that we desire the truth above all.
Nothing strange about this. It is natural to man, an intelligent being, 
to desire the truth.
 
 (I still dare to speak of man as "an intelligent being"!)

But actually, what we desire is not "the truth" so much as "to be in the right."

To seek the pure truth for its own sake may be natural to us,
 but we are not able to act always in this respect according to our nature.

What we seek is not the pure truth, but the partial truth that justifies our prejudices,
 our limitations, our selfishness. This is not "the truth." 
It is only an argument strong enough to prove us "right."
And usually our desire to be right is correlative to our conviction
 that somebody else (perhaps everybody else) is wrong.

Why do we want to prove them wrong?

Because we need them to be wrong. For if they are wrong, 
and we are right, then our untruth becomes truth: 
our selfishness becomes justice and virtue: 
our cruelty and lust cannot be fairly condemned.

We can rest secure in the fiction we have determined to embrace as "truth."

What we desire is not the truth, but rather that our lie should be proved "right,"
 and our iniquity be vindicated as "just."

No wonder we hate. No wonder we are violent. 
No wonder we exhaust ourselves in preparing for war!

And in doing so, of course, we offer the enemy another reason to believe
 that he is right, that he must arm, that he must get ready to destroy us.

Our own lie provides the foundation of truth on which he erects his own lie,
 and the two lies together react to produce hatred, murder, disaster.




~ Thomas Merton, 
from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
 with thanks to brainpickings


 
 
 

Thursday, April 29, 2021

the silent self


Image result for noise art

There is a silent self within us whose presence is disturbing
 precisely because it is so silent: it can't be spoken.
 It has to remain silent. To articulate it, to verbalize it,
 is to tamper with it, and in some way to destroy it. 

Now let us frankly face the fact that our culture is one 
which is geared in many ways to help us evade any need to face this inner, silent self.
 We live in a state of constant semi attention to the sound of voices, music, traffic,
 or the generalized noise of what goes on around us all the time. 
This keeps us immersed in a flood of racket and words,
 a diffuse medium in which our consciousness is half diluted:
 we are not quite "thinking", not entirely responding, 
but we are more or less there. 
 
We are not fully present and not entirely absent, 
not fully withdrawn, yet not completely available. 
 
It cannot be said that we are really participating in anything
 and we may in fact, be half conscious of our alienation and resentment. 
Yet we derive a certain comfort from the vague sense that we are
 "part of something" -- 
although we are not quite able to define what that something is -- 
and probably wouldn't want to define it even if we could. 
 
We just float along in the general noise. 
Resigned and indifferent,
 we share semi-consciously in the mindless mind of Muzak 
and radio commercials which pass for "reality".
 
 
 
 

- Thomas Merton
from  Love & Living
art by Andy Mercer
 

 
 

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

silent language

 
 

 

 
When the monks had found their homes,
they not only settled there, 
for better or for worse,
but the sank their roots into the ground
and fell in love with their woods...
 
Forest and field, sun wind and sky, 
earth and water,
all speak the same silent language,
reminding the monk that he is here
to develop like the things that 
grow all around him... 
 
 
 
~ Thomas Merton
from the introduction to
When the Trees say Nothing
 edited by Kathleen Deignan
  
 
 

Friday, February 5, 2021

to love another





To love another as a person we must begin by granting
 him his own autonomy and identity as a person. 
We have to love him for what he is in himself, 
and not for what he is to us. 

We have to love him for his own good, 
not for the good we get out of him. 

And this is impossible unless we are capable of a love 
which ‘transforms’ us, so to speak, into the other person, 
making us able to see things as he sees them, love what he loves, 
experience the deeper realities of his own life as if they were our own. 

Without sacrifice, such a transformation is utterly impossible. 
But unless we are capable of this kind of transformation 
‘into the other’ 
while remaining ourselves, 
we are not yet capable of a fully human existence.




~ Thomas Merton
from Disputed Questions


Thursday, December 31, 2020

in silence








Be still.
Listen to the stones of the wall.
be silent, they try
To speak your
 
Name.
Listen
To the living walls.
Who are you?
Who
Are you? Whose
Silence are you?
 
Who (be quiet)
Are you (as these stones
Are quiet). Do not
Think of what you are
Still less of
What you may one day be.
Rather
Be what you are (but who?) be
The unthinkable one
You do not know.
 
O be still, while
You are still alive,
And all things live around you
Speaking (I do not hear)
To your own being,
Speaking by the Unknown
That is in you and in themselves.
 
"I will try, like them
To be my own silence:
And this is difficult.  The whole
World is secretly on fire.  The stones
Burn, even the stones
They burn me.  How can a man be still or
Listen to all things burning?  How can he dare
To sit with them when
All their silence
Is on fire?"

 
 
~ Thomas Merton
from The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton


 

Tuesday, December 29, 2020

no room

 
 
 
 

 
 
Christ’s place is with those others for whom there is no room.
His place is with those who do not belong,
who are rejected by power, because they are regarded as weak,
those who are discredited,
who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated.
With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world.

He is mysteriously present in those for whom there seems to be nothing
 but the world at its worst…
It is in these that he hides himself, [the people] for whom there is no room.
 
 
 
 
 
 
-- Thomas Merton 
from Raids on the Unspeakable 
 with thanks to louie, louie

 
 
 

Thursday, December 24, 2020

life within life



 
 
 
 
You who sleep in my breast are not met with words, 
but in the emergence of life within life 
and of wisdom within wisdom.   
With You there is no longer any dialogue, 
any contest, any opposition.  
You are found in communion! 
Thou in me and I in Thee,  
Thou in them and they in me: 
dispossession within dispossession, 
dispassion within dispassion, 
emptiness within emptiness, 
freedom within freedom. 
 I am alone.  
Thou are alone. 
 The Father and I are One.
 
 
 
~ Thomas Merton
from Dialogues with Silence
sketch by the author
 

 
Your brightness is my darkness.  
I know nothing of You and, by myself, 
I cannot even imagine how to go about knowing You. 
 If I imagine You, I am mistaken.  
If I understand You, I am deluded.  
If I am conscious and certain I know You, I am crazy.
The darkness is enough.
 
 
prayer written by Merton in 1941 
before midnight mass at Christmas 
 
 
 

Thursday, December 3, 2020

a time of change







In a time of drastic change 
one can be too preoccupied with what is ending
 or too obsessed with what seems to be beginning.
 In either case one loses touch with the present
 and with its obscure but dynamic possibilities. 

You do not need to know what is happening,
 or exactly where it is all going.
 
What you need is to recognize the possibilities
 and challenges offered by the present moment, 
and embrace them with courage, faith and hope.
 
In such an event, 
courage is the authentic form taken by love.




~  Thomas Merton
from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander



Monday, November 23, 2020

willing to belong

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 To deliver oneself up,
to hand oneself over,
entrust oneself completely to the silence
of a wide landscape of woods and hills,
or sea and desert; to sit still while
the sun comes up over the land
and fills its silences with light.

...few are willing to belong completely
to such silence, to let it soak into their bones,
to breathe nothing but silence, to feed
on silence, and to turn the very substance of their life
into a living and vigilant silence.



~ Thomas Merton
from Thoughts in Solitude
 
 
 
 
 
 

deepening



Image result for agitation art



He who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world 
without deepening his own self-understanding, 
freedom and integrity and capacity to love, 
will not have anything to give others. 

He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion 
of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centeredness, 
his delusions about the ends and means, 
his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas.


- Thomas Merton
from Contemplation in a World of Action
art by  Art Strayer





Sunday, November 8, 2020

a song for nobody









A yellow flower
(Light and spirit)
Sings by itself
For nobody.

A golden spirit
(Light and emptiness)
Sings without a word
By itself.

Let no one touch this gentle sun
In whose dark eye
Someone is awake.

(No light, no gold, no name, no color
And no thought:
O, wide awake!)

A golden heaven
Sings by itself
A song to nobody.



~ Thomas Merton
from Selected Poems of Thomas Merton


Friday, September 11, 2020

letter to a young activist








Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the truth of the work itself. And there, too, a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually as you struggle less and less for an idea, and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.

You are fed up with words, and I don’t blame you. I am nauseated by them sometimes. I am also, to tell you the truth, nauseated by ideals and with causes. This sounds like heresy, but I think you will understand what I mean. It is so easy to get engrossed with ideas and slogans and myths that in the end one is left holding the bag, empty, with no trace of meaning left in it. And then the temptation is to yell louder than ever in order to make the meaning be there again by magic. Going through this kind of reaction helps you to guard against this. Your system is complaining of too much verbalizing, and it is right.

…The big results are not in your hands or mine, but they suddenly happen, and we can share in them, but there is no point in building our lives on this personal satisfaction, which may be denied us and which after all is not that important.

The next step in the process is for you to see that your even thinking about what you are doing is crucially important. You are probably striving to build yourself an identity in your work, out of your work and witness. You are using it, so to speak, to protect yourself against nothingness, annihilation. That is not the right use of your work. All the good that you will do will come, not from you but from the fact that you have allowed yourself, in the obedience of faith, to be used by God’s love. Think of this more and gradually you will be free from the need to prove yourself, and you can be more open to the power that will work through you without your knowing it.



~ Thomas Merton