Maxioms by Thomas Merton
Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.
Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.
Prayer is the movement of trust, of gratitude, of adoration, or of sorrow, that places us before God, seeing both read more
Prayer is the movement of trust, of gratitude, of adoration, or of sorrow, that places us before God, seeing both Him and ourselves in the light of His infinite truth, and moves us to ask Him for the mercy, the spiritual strength, the material help, that we all need. The man whose prayer is so pure that he never asks God for anything does not know who God is, and does not know who he is himself: for he does not know his own need of God. All true prayer somehow confesses our absolute dependence on the Lord of life and death. It is, therefore, a deep and vital contact with Him whom we know not only as Lord but as Father. It is when we pray truly that we really are. Our being is brought to a high perfection by this.
The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which read more
The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another.
Commemoration of Thomas Merton, Monk, Spiritual Writer, 1968 Our knowledge of God is paradoxically not of him as read more
Commemoration of Thomas Merton, Monk, Spiritual Writer, 1968 Our knowledge of God is paradoxically not of him as the object of our scrutiny, but of ourselves as utterly dependent on his saving and merciful knowledge of us. It is in proportion, as we are known to him that we find our real being and identity in Christ. We know him in and through ourselves in so far as his truth is the source of our being and his merciful love is the very heart of our life and existence.
