Another Thomas Merton Thought

Thomas Merton always speaks to my heart regardless of what I am reading from him. God gave this man a gift of wisdom that is unparalleled amongst his contemporaries. Sometimes it's like he is speaking directly to my soul. I find such a tight connection with what he says in his writings.

I am forced to reflect on this one today and most likely for several days hereafter.

"Fickleness and indecision are signs of self-love. If you can never make up your mind what God wills for you, but are always veering from one opinion to another, from one practice to another, from one method to another, it may be an indication that you are trying to get around God's will and do your own wiht a quiet conscience.

As soon as God gets you in one monastery you want to be in another.

As soon as you taste one way of prayer, you want to try another. You are always making resolutions and breaking them by counter-resolutions. You ask your confessor and do not remember the answers. Before you finish one book you begin another, and with every book you read you change the whole plan of your interior life.

Soon you will have no interior life at all. Your whole existence will be a patchwork of confused desires and daydreams and velleities in which you do nothing except defeat the work of grace: for all this is an elaborate subconscious device of your nature to resist God, Whose work in your soul demands the sacrifice of all that you desire and delight in, and, indeed, of all that you are.

So keep still, and let Him do some work.

This is what it means to renounce not only pleasures and possessions, but even your own self."

If you've never read Thomas Merton you should pick up something of his. Maybe start with New Seeds of Contemplation or No Man is an Island. Incredibly profound and has really opened my eyes to the wonders of God.