"If the #essence of freedom were merely the act of choice, then the mere fact of making choices would perfect our freedom.” --Thomas Merton. #InQuotes
@Eggs @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks
And sometimes you find a book with an old B.Dalton sticker & for once,you don‘t mind that there‘s a sticker on your book ! Gotta love an old paperback in great condition .And if you happen to pick up a cute little donkey, add it to the dustables !
pickThe name,Thomas Merton,seems to pop up in my world quite often. Sometimes it is in a book that I‘m reading, or an article online and even quotes on the TV screen for a music station that is often on. A good friend highly recommended this book. It has been sitting on my shelves for years. Born in France, educated at Cambridge and Columbia,having lived a life filled with travel,adventure and many friends,Thomas decided he wanted a simple life.
You would think this was written today.. I guess some things never change.
pickThomas Merton strikes right through you, he shatters and breaks apart the self deception of our ego. Time after time during reading this I felt as if my ego had no where to hide and it had to stand trial. But Thomas Merton refused to be the judge and would hold no court.Thomas Merton shows that this experience is not to be judged but observed and understood for what it is.It seems to me that “Thinking” gets in the way of “Living” .
This book ! Thomas Merton is just laying waste to all my preconceived notions. He is laying an axe to the root of a dead tree!
“On the other hand, when you use the expression to "desire God" you implicitly reduce God to the status of an "object" or of a "thing," as if He were "something" that could be grasped and possessed the way we possess riches, or knowledge, or some other created entity. “……”In so doing, we tend inevitably to distort and even to dese crate His holy and infinite truth. “
The chief contradiction of sin…. “we have to do violence to our selves to keep from laboring uselessly for what is bitter and without joy, and we have to compel ourselves to take what is easy and full of happiness as though it were against our interests, because for us the line of least resistance leads in the way of greatest hardship and sometimes for us to do what is, in itself, most easy, can be the hardest thing in the world”
This cuts really deep in the soul. Thomas Merton seems to
know bullshit when he sees it.
