The law is consistent; grace is inconsistent.
Life is not a matter of getting something out of everything. Life itself is imperfect.
Our vocation is precisely to be imperfect, incomplete, insufficient in ourselves, changing, hapless, destitute, and weak, hastening to the grave...but His peace must somehow find its way into our lives, secretly, while we are here...
And the secret of sincerity is to be sought not in a love for abstract truth but in a love for real people and real things...[sincerity: to say what we mean, to mean what we say (intelligence and will).]
The selfishness of an age that has devoted itself to the mere cult of pleasure...
We must somehow strip ourselves of our greatest illusions about ourselves, frankly recognize in how many ways we are unlovable...we must accept the fact that we are not what we would like to be.
---Thomas Merton.
~~~
A life with limited possibilities is not really a life, for life itself is a breaking into the unpredictable, the open, fresh ground, as well as a returning home. A life where one is held fast by possibilities also diminishes us in some way and makes us homeless. 'Home' and repose is then a projection, something deeply imagined, longed for. A life of persistent longing doesn't seem like much of a life.
Without any ideals or principles would our lives just consist in a succession of moments strung together after one another?
Sincerity: to see oneself honestly. Are there limits to how long one can look?
A child sees some spilled ink and immediately asks: "who did it?" A grown up sits down and analyzes the pattern.
What if our desires really did express what we are at heart? The loss of courage, the wrong turnings, the words spoken in anger...we say to ourselves, consolingly, "I wasn't myself", keeping this precious image of our "true" self somewhere safe, deeply buried, as if we could retrieve it at will. We open the cloth and see that it has faded and the frame is being eroded by rust.
Life is not a matter of getting something out of everything. Life itself is imperfect.
Our vocation is precisely to be imperfect, incomplete, insufficient in ourselves, changing, hapless, destitute, and weak, hastening to the grave...but His peace must somehow find its way into our lives, secretly, while we are here...
And the secret of sincerity is to be sought not in a love for abstract truth but in a love for real people and real things...[sincerity: to say what we mean, to mean what we say (intelligence and will).]
The selfishness of an age that has devoted itself to the mere cult of pleasure...
We must somehow strip ourselves of our greatest illusions about ourselves, frankly recognize in how many ways we are unlovable...we must accept the fact that we are not what we would like to be.
---Thomas Merton.
~~~
A life with limited possibilities is not really a life, for life itself is a breaking into the unpredictable, the open, fresh ground, as well as a returning home. A life where one is held fast by possibilities also diminishes us in some way and makes us homeless. 'Home' and repose is then a projection, something deeply imagined, longed for. A life of persistent longing doesn't seem like much of a life.
Without any ideals or principles would our lives just consist in a succession of moments strung together after one another?
Sincerity: to see oneself honestly. Are there limits to how long one can look?
A child sees some spilled ink and immediately asks: "who did it?" A grown up sits down and analyzes the pattern.
What if our desires really did express what we are at heart? The loss of courage, the wrong turnings, the words spoken in anger...we say to ourselves, consolingly, "I wasn't myself", keeping this precious image of our "true" self somewhere safe, deeply buried, as if we could retrieve it at will. We open the cloth and see that it has faded and the frame is being eroded by rust.
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