The Beginning of Love ...

A Flying Bird and Reflection on Hood Canal, Washington

The beginning of love 

is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, 

and not to twist them 

to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
~Thomas Merton

In Silence

Be still.
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
To speak your Name.

Listen
To the living walls.
Who are you?
Who
Are you? Whose
Silence are you?

Who (be quiet)
Are you (as these stones
Are quiet). Do not
Think of what you are
Still less of
What you may one day be.
Rather
Be what you are (but who?) be
The unthinkable one
You do not know.

O be still, while
You are still alive,
And all things live around you
Speaking (I do not hear)
To your own being,
Speaking by the Unknown
That is in you and in themselves.
“I will try,
like them
To be my own silence:
And this is difficult.
The whole
World is secretly on fire.
The stones
Burn, even the stones
They burn me.
How can a man be still or
Listen to all things burning?
How can he dare
To sit with them
When all their silence
Is on fire?”

~ Thomas Merton ~

(The Strange Islands: Poems by Thomas Merton)

Advent Wisdom from Thomas Merton

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. John 1:5

We are supposed to be the light of the world.  We are supposed to be a light to ourselves and to others.  That may well be what accounts for the fact that the world is in darkness!  What then is meant by the light of Christ in our lives?  What is meant by "holiness?"

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 must give us the light, the strength, and the courage to fulfill the task.

   Thomas Merton, Life and Holiness

I use this prayer from Companions in Christ as a communal acknowledgment of God's sustaining presence:     
Light of Christ, shine on our path and lead us to the heart of God! 

I have no idea where I am going ...

My God, My God, "I have no idea where I am going" ... this is a line from a prayer in one of my favorite books for a sabbath day ... Dialogues with Silence by Thomas Merton. It is actually quoted from another of his books ... Thoughts in Solitude.

In this prayer, Merton goes on to say some very comforting words to me and to people like me ... people who are never sure about anything. Merton says to God, "I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you." And I am counting on that ... because I have a really deep desire to take a journey with God!

I am taking the first step on this journey ... a journey that I am not ready for ... a journey that may lead me into my deepest desire. The deepest desire of my weary soul is to be in union with God being what I was created to be and doing what I was created to do. Yet for some reason I feel lost and so I walk with Merton and cry out ... My God, My God, "I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost ... for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me ..."

Trembling with feeble trust it is time to take a deep breath as I put myself out there in the world with MOSAIC Spiritual Formation Ministry ... Creating Beauty out of the Broken Pieces of Life.