The things we really need come to us only as gifts, and in order to re…

Thomas Merton
439 citations
The things we really need come to us only as gifts, and in order to receive them as gifts we have to be open. In order to be open we have to renounce ourselves, in a sense we have to die to our image of ourselves, our autonomy, our fixation upon our self-willed identity. ✨ Thomas Merton (2009). Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p.224, Image
Death
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The spiritual life is first of all a life. It is not merely something to be known and studied, it is to be lived. ✨ Thomas Merton (2011). Thoughts In Solitude, p.52, Macmillan
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. … ▶
The desire to kill is like the desire to attack another with an ingot of red -hot iron: I have to pick up the incandescent metal and burn my own hand while burning the other. Hate itself is the seed … ▶
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