Thomas Merton

I spent the weekend at the Genesse Abbey, a Trappist monastery south of Rochester, NY. I'll talk more about this experience later this week. But quickly I want to share a couple of quotes from Thomas Merton's book "Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander". Merton was a Trappist monk and so much more.

"Why can we not be content with an ordinary, secret, personal happiness that does not need to be explained or justified? We fee guilty if we are not happy in some publicly approved way, if we do not imagine that we are meeting some standard of happiness that is recognized by all. God give us the gift and the capacity to make our own happiness out of our own situation. And it is not hard to be happy, simply be accepting what is within reach and making of it what we can. "


"In the long run, no one can show another the error that is within him, unless the other is convinced that his critic first sees and loves the good that is within him. So while we are perfectly willing to tell our adversary that he is wrong, we will never be able to do effectively until we can ourselves appreciate where he is right."

"Love, love only, love of our deluded fellow man as he actually is, in his delusion and in his sin: this alone can open the door to truth."