Thomas Merton

By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky read more

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.

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.

We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, read more

We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have-for their usefulness. -Thomas Merton.

October is a fine and dangerous season in America . . . a
wonderful time to begin anything at read more

October is a fine and dangerous season in America . . . a
wonderful time to begin anything at all.