Light in the darkness

Robin and I have recently returned from the Holy Land, a nice euphemism, but one that strikes wide of the mark for truth. I began composing a post on our travels and then realized I was growing angrier and angrier. Injustice strikes a resonating cord with me. Rather than continue I paused and retreated to a text that I often find comfort in, Thomas Merton's Dialogues in Silence. Over the past few mornings as the rain and mists swirled about I huddled in front of the fire and with tea vapors rising aloft I opened this dog-eared tome and found the peace I hungered for. He writes.

"In one sense we are always traveling, and traveling as if we did not know where we were going. In another sense we have already arrived. We cannot arrive at the perfect possession of God in this life, and That is why we are traveling and in darkness. But we already possess Him by grace, and therefore, in that sense, we are dwelling in the light. But oh! How far have I to go to find You in whom I have already arrived!"


"....only save me from myself. Save me from my own, private, poisonous urge to change everything, to act with out reason, to move for movement's sake, to unsettle everything that You have ordained. Let me rest in Your will and be silent. Then the light of Your joy will warm my life. Its fire will burn in my heart and shine for your glory. This is what I live for. Amen, amen."

"...What was delivered to Moses on tablets of stone, as fruit of lightning and thunder, is now more thoroughly born in our souls as quietly as the breath of our own being."

" My hope is in what the eye has never seen. Therefore let me not trust in visible rewards. My hope is in what the human heart cannot feel. Therefore let me not trust in the feelings of my heart. My hope is in what the hand has never touched. Do not let me trust what I can can grasp between my fingers, because Death will loosen my grasp and my vain hope will be gone."


" Father, I beg You to teach me to be a man of peace and to help bring peace to the world, to study here truth and non-violence, and to have the patience and courage to suffer for truth."


Thomas Merton, Dialogues in Silence.


Peace be with you....