Double Minded

Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude (New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 1956)

Without courage we can never attain to true simplicity. Cowardice keeps us "double minded" - hesitating between the world and God. ...And this hesitation makes true prayer impossible - it never quite dares to ask for anything, or if it asks, it is so uncertain of being heard that in the very act of asking, it surreptitiously seeks by human prudence to construct a make-shift answer. pg. 24

Deception

David Loy, Tricycle Magazine The Nonduality of Good Evil, Spring 2002

... if you want to hurt someone, it is important to demonize them first - in other words, fit them into your good-versus-evil story. That is why the first casualty of all wars is truth.

The Grace We Need Is Here

Thomas Merton, Life and Holiness (New York: Image, 1963).


If we are called by God to holiness of life, and if holiness is beyond our natural power to achieve (which it certainly is) then it follows that God himself must give us the light, the strength, and the courage to fulfill the task he requires of us. He will certainly give us the grace we need. If we do not become saints it is because we do not avail ourselves of his gift. p. 17.

Facing Despair

Thomas Merton Thoughts in Solitude New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999

This, then, is our desert: to live facing despair, but not to consent. To trample it down under hope in the Cross. To wage war against despair unceasingly. That war is our wilderness. If we wage it courageously, we will find Christ at our side. If we cannot face it, we will never find Him. pg. 8

Will it come like this

Thomas Merton When the Trees Say Nothing, Sorin Books 2008

And now my whole being breathes the wind which blows through the belfry, and my hand is on the door through which I see the heavens. The door swings out upon a vast sea of darkness and of prayer. Will it come like this, the moment of my death? Will You open the door upon the great forest and set my feet upon a ladder under the moon, and take me out among the stars? pg 80

Hagia Sophia

Thomas Merton, "Hagia Sophia, I. Dawn. The Hour of Lauds", The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton 1963

There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a
dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden whole-
ness. This mysterious Unity and Integrity is Wisdom,
the Mother of all, Natura naturans. There is in all
things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence
that is a fount of action and joy. It rises up in word-
less gentleness and flows out to me from the unseen
roots of all created being, welcoming me tenderly,
saluting me with indescribable humility. This is at
once my own being, my own nature, and the Gift of
my Creator's Thought and Art within me, speaking
as Hagia Sophia, speaking as my sister, Wisdom.

I am awakened, I am born again at the voice of this,
my Sister, sent to me from the depths of the divine
fecundity.

Let us suppose I am a man lying asleep in a hospital.
I am indeed this man lying asleep. It is July the second,
the Feast of Our Lady's Visitation. A Feast of Wisdom.

At five-thirty in the morning I am dreaming in a very
quiet room when a soft voice awakens me from my
dream. I am like all mankind awakening from all the
dreams that ever were dreamed in all the nights of the
world. It is like the One Christ awakening in all the
separate selves that ever were separate and isolated
and alone in all the lands of the earth. It is like all minds
coming back together into awareness from all distractions,
cross-purposes and confusions, into unity of love. It is like
the first morning of the world (when Adam, at the sweet voice
of Wisdom awoke from nonentity and knew her), and like the Last
Morning of the world when all the fragments of Adam will return from
death at the voice of Hagia Sophia, and will know where they stand.

Inward Destitution

Thomas Merton New Seeds of Contemplation New Directions Publishing, 1961

One of the greatest sufferings of a contemplative is to feel the terrible, inescapable coarseness and grossness and inadequacy of the highest human modes of love and intellection when they are seen in the light of God, when they reach out toward God and fail. pg 262

Rotten Luxury

Thomas Merton New Seeds of Contemplation New Directions Publishing, 1961

"Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. It is reached when man deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost." pg 180