There is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question. Eternity is in the present. Eternity is in the palm of the hand. Eternity is the seed of fire whose sudden roots break the barriers that keep my heart from being an abyss.
– Thomas Merton, Journal Entry – July 4, 1952
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The spiritual life is a long and often arduous search for what you have already found. – Henri J. M. Nouwen
When you feel anger or resentment, ask God to help you feel it, learn from it, and then release it. Ask Him to bless those who you feel anger toward. Ask Him to bless you too.
When you feel fear, ask Him to take it from you. When you feel misery, force gratitude. When you feel deprived, know that there is enough.
When you feel ashamed, reassure yourself that who you are is okay. You are good enough.
When you doubt your timing or your present position in life, assure yourself that all is well; you are right where you’re meant to be. Reassure yourself that others are too.
When you ponder the future, tell yourself that it will be good. When you look back at the past, relinquish regrets.
When you notice problems, affirm there will be a timely solution and a gift from the problem.
When you resist feelings or thoughts, practice acceptance. When you feel discomfort, know it will pass. When you identify a want or a need, tell yourself it will be met.
When you worry about those you love, ask God to protect and care for them. When you worry about yourself, ask Him to do the same.
When you think about others, think love. When you think about yourself, think love.
Then watch your thoughts transform reality.
– Melody Beattie – The Language of Letting Go
Can I get used to it day after day
a little at a time while the tide keeps
coming in faster the waves get bigger
building on each other breaking records
this is not the world that I remember
then comes the day when I open the box
that I remember packing with such care
and there is the face that I had known well
in little pieces staring up at me
it is not mentioned on the front pages
but somewhere far back near the real estate
among the things that happen every day
to someone who now happens to be me
and what can I do and who can tell me
then there is what the doctor comes to say
endless patience will never be enough
the only hope is to be the daylight
How high the corn is this year, and what joy there is in seeing it! The tall crests nodding twelve to fifteen feet above the ground and all the silk-bearded ears. You come down out of the novitiate, through the door in the wall, over the trestle, and down into this green paradise of stalks and silence. I know the joy and worship the Indians must have felt, and the Eucharistic rightness of it! How can one not feel such things – so that I love the Mayas and the Incas as perhaps the most human of peoples, as the ones who did most honor to our continents.
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The irreligious mind is simply the unreal mind, the zombie, abstracted mind, that does not see things that grow in the earth and feel glad about them, but only knows prices and figures and statistics. In a world of numbers you can be irreligious, unless the numbers themselves are incarnate in astronomy and music. But, for that, they must have something to do with seasons and with harvests, with the joy of the Neolithic peoples, who for millennia were quiet and human.
– Thomas Merton, journal entry – July 26, 1963
Perhaps going nowhere is better, I don’t know.
– Thomas Merton, journal entry, July, 18, 1967
Photo: Paris, February 2008
Edge of Atlantic 