A Year With Thomas Merton - January 1

A Breath of Zen

Fidelity to grace in my life is fidelity to simplicity, rejecting ambition and analysis and elaborate thought, or even elaborate concern.

A breath of Zen blows all these cobwebs out the window.

It is certainly true that what is needed is to get back to the "original face" and drop off all the piled-up garments of thought that do not fit me and are not "mine"--but to take only what is nameless.

I have been absurdly burdened since the beginning of the year with the illusions of "great responsibility" and of a task to be done. Actually whatever work is to be done is God's work and not mine, and I will not help matters, only hinder them, by too much care.

Sunrise--an event that calls forth solemn music in the very depths of one's being, as if one's whole being had to attune itself to the cosmos and praise God for a new day, praise Him in the name of all the beings that ever were or ever will be--as though now upon me falls the responsibility of seeing what all my ancestors have seen, and acknowledging it, and praising God, so that, whether or not they praised God back then, themselves, they can do so now in me.

Sunrise demands this rightness, this order, this true disposition of one's whole being.

January 20-21, 1963, IV.291-92

A Year With Thomas Merton - August 4

Praising God: The Only Great Thing

It would be so easy and consoling to say, at every moment: “This thing I am doing is regarded by everyone as a sure means of attaining to perfection and to the possession of God.” But would the peace and consolation I felt have anything necessarily to do with perfection or the possession of God? Might it not turn out to be the greatest of all illusions? A surrender to the authority of common opinion—“They say.” How weak our consciences are! We give in and shut our eyes. We have conformed to the “them.” We are at peace. “They say” this is perfection.

Much more to the point: the prayer that struggles to get out of myself and reach God, in obscurity, in trial, fighting down the phantoms.

The great thing and the only thing is to adore and praise God.

To seek Him is to adore Him and to say that He alone is God and there is no other.

We must lay down our life for His Truth. We must bear witness to what is and the fidelity of God to His promises.

We must believe with our whole heart what God our Father has offered and promised us.

We must leave all things to answer His call to us, and to reply to His grace. When we have done this, we can talk of perfection, but when we have done this, we no longer need to talk of perfection.

August 28 and 29, 1956, III. 75-76