Month: November 2023
a kind of charm
Some things are too clear to be understood, and what you think is your understanding of them is only a kind of charm, a kind of incantation in your mind concerning that thing. This is not understanding: it is something you remember. So much for definition! We always have to go back and start from the beginning and make over all the definitions for ourselves again. – Thomas Merton
to discover the truth about myself…
Man’s intelligence, however we may misuse it, is far too keen and too sure to rest for long in error. It may embrace a lie and cling to it stubbornly, believing it to be true: but it cannot find true rest in falsehood. The mind that is in love with error wears itself out with anxiety, lest its error be discovered for what it is. But the man who loves truth can already find rest in the acknowledgment of his mistakes, for that is the beginning of truth.
The first step toward finding God, Who is Truth, is to discover the truth about myself: and if I have been in error, this first step to truth is the discovery of my error. A false and illusory “experience” of what appears to be God’s action in the soul may bring with it, for a moment, a kind of interior silence: the silence of a soul that rests in an illusion. But this silence is quickly disturbed by a deep under- current of unrest and noise. The tension of a soul trying to hold itself in silence, when it has no truth to appease it with a superior silence, is louder than the noise of big cities and more disturbing than the movement of an army.
– Thomas Merton
from Song of The Open Road by Walt Whitman
War
Old age in the towns. The heart without an owner. Love without any object. Grass, dust, crow. And the young ones?
In the coffins.
The tree alone and dry. Women like a stick of widowhood across the bed. Hatred there is no cure for.. And the young ones?
In the coffins.
MIGUEL HERNANDEZ
(translated by Hardie St. Martin)
growing up emotionally
In summary, we might say:
- Be enough in earnest about emotional growth to make it the most important concern of your life.
- Be willing to say. “No,” to anything which interferes with that continued growth.
- Attempt to be objective and honest in the selection of courses which best fit your new emotional pattern.
- If the deeper self does not wish to do a certain thing, that fact is justification enough for not doing it. Each of us is primarily responsible in accounting to himself.
- In following such a course of action, you will be amazed to discover that decisiveness earns the admiration of acquaintances, since most of them wish that they could exercise the same kind of courage.
In the process of growing up emotionally we will often be startled to discover vistas of new satisfactions opening up before us. We will begin to realize that our childish fears have kept us from enjoying freedom, that our desire for universal approval has made it impossible for us to gain the approval which we most desire.
These new satisfactions will not come all at once. Neither should we expect to plunge immediately into large decisions that tax our emotional strength too greatly. The first tentative steps will be the most important and with exercise greater decisions can be undertaken.
The great mountaineers begin their training by climbing little hills. In growing up, we must all learn how to walk before we can run.
- Lewis F. Presnall
Edge of Atlantic 