THE MONK THOMAS MERTON

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 “If you want to identify me, ask me not where I
 live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my
 hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail,
 ask me what I think is keeping me from living
 fully for the thing I want to live for.”
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Thomas Merton, O.C.S.O. (January 31, 1915 – December 10, 1968) was a 20th century Anglo-American Catholic writer and mystic. A Trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani, Kentucky, he was a poet, social activist, and student of comparative religion. In 1949, he was ordained to the priesthood and given the name Father Louis.

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Merton wrote more than 70 books, mostly on spirituality, social justice and a quiet pacifism, as well as scores of essays and reviews, including his best-selling autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain (1948), which sent scores of disillusioned World War II veterans, students, and even teen-agers flocking to monasteries across the US, and was also featured in National Review's list of the 100 best non-fiction books of the century. Merton was a keen proponent of interfaith understanding.
 He pioneered dialogue with prominent Asian spiritual figures, including the Dalai Lama, the Japanese writer D.T. Suzuki, and the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh. Merton has also been the subject of several biographies.
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From Wikipedia

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A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.
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Art enables us to find ourselves and lose
   ourselves at the same time.

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  The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most. 

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By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that  all nature seems renewed around me and with  me. The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue,  the trees a deeper green. The whole world is  charged with the glory of God and I feel fire  and music under my feet.

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Every moment and every event of every man's  life on earth plants something in his soul.
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I cannot make the universe obey me. I cannot  make other people conform to my own whims  and fancies. I cannot make even my own body  obey me.

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If you want to study the social and  political history  of modern nations,  study hell.
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In the last analysis, the individual person is  responsible for living his own life and for  "finding himself." If he persists in shifting his  responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find  out the meaning of his own existence. 
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Just remaining quietly in the presence of God,  listening to Him, being attentive to Him,  requires a lot of courage and know-how.

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Peace demands the most heroic labor  and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands  greater heroism than war. It demands greater  fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect  purity of conscience.
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  Editor's Note .
We've had Merton's material up on the blog a number of times.  The titles below are  all linked.
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  MODERN LIFE IS GEARED FOR A FLIGHT FROM GOD
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 HAPPINESS IS NOT A MATTER OF INTENSITY
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 THE TIME OF NO ROOM
  (This posting was part of our  ADVENT SERIES last year - the blog post just has  a few photos, but has a link  to our website, where there's text,  pics, MUSIC, and more.)
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  TO LIVE WITHOUT WATCHING OURSELVES LIVE
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 THE COSMIC DANCE
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THREE FRIENDS
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 A PRAYER FROM THE MONK MERTON
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   “A man knows when he has found  his
 vocation when he stops thinking  about
  how to live, and begins to live.” 
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