few are willing

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

silence and contemplation

 

~ Thomas Merton

.

defending the image

 humility is the greatest freedom. 

 

As long as you have to defend the imaginary self

 that you think is important, you lose your peace of heart.

 

As soon as you compare that shadow with the shadows of other people,

 you lose all joy, because you have begun to trade in unrealities and

 there is no joy in things that do not exist.

~Thomas Merton

 

an "I" that is a subject

 

the true inner self, the true indestructible and immortal

person, the true "I" who answers to a new and secret

name known only to himself and to God, does not

"have" anything, even "contemplation." This "I" is not

the kind of subject that can amass experiences, reflect

on them, reflect on himself, for this "I" is not the super-

ficial and empirical self that we know in our everyday

life.

as long as there is an "I" that is the definite subject of a

contemplative experience, an "I" that is aware of itself

and it's contemplation, an "I" that can possess a certain 

"degree of spirituality," then we have not yet passed over

the Red Sea, we have not yet "gone out of Egypt." We

remain in the realm of multiplicity, activity, incompleteness,

striving and desire.

the separate entity that is you apparently disappears and

nothing seems to be left but a pure Freedom, love identified 

with Love. Not two loves, one waiting for the other, striving

for the other, seeking for the other, but Love Loving in

freedom.

you do not take the step; you do not know the transition;

you do not fall into anything. You do not go anywhere,

and so you do not know the way by which you came back

afterward. You are certainly not lost. You do no fly. There

is no space, or there is all space: it makes no difference.

~ Thomas Merton

from Merton's Palace of Nowhere

by James Finley

a point of nothingness

 

There is no way of telling people that

 they are all walking around shining like the sun.

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness

 which is untouched by sin and by illusion, 

a point of pure truth, 

a point or spark which belongs entirely to God,

 which is never at our disposal, 

from which God disposes of our lives, 

which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind

 or the brutalities of our own will.

This little point of nothingness

 and of absolute poverty

 is the pure glory of God in us.

It is, so to speak, his name written in us …

 like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven.

It is in everybody, and if we could see it 

we would see these billions of points of light 

coming together in the face and blaze of a sun 

that would make all the darkness 

and cruelty of life vanish completely.

I have no program for this seeing. 

It is only given.

But the gate of heaven is everywhere.

~ Thomas Merton

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

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

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

.

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

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

.

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

 

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

 

 

 

the silent self

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

 

 

 

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

  

 

 

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

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

 

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

 

 

 

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