A Year With Thomas Merton - May 8

To Kiss It All Good-bye

Vigil of Pentecost. What do I look for tomorrow? Light? No. It is safer to travel in darkness. What I need is the grace to cease making any kind of fuss over anything: travel in darkness and do God's will. He will get me through the obstacles. I will never reach Him by my own efforts, my own wisdom. I give up all my plans, as if I had any in the first place. Forget what other people do; their virtues and their faults are none of my business. Be guided by obedience even if it seems to lead to the ruin of my aspirations. Easier to write it than to do it. I wonder if I mean it, too, to go on in this hopeless muddle of writing and activities and contacts with the world, and trust that that can bring me to God? Yes, that is what I have go to do.

It seems like going around in a circle and saying the same thing over and over again, but it is something that haunts me, and I can't seem to settle it.

I feel in my bones that I will never have any peace until I kiss everything good-bye, even my highest ideals and aspirations. God only tolerates one desire: perfectly doing His will and being annihilated for His glory.

May 23, 1947, II.76-77