Thomas Merton’s Prayer in Uncertainty

Lots of people may have lost the track of the path and do not know to temper their fear for what might be coming in this coronacrisis.
We only can hope more people shall find some more time to meditate and to pray to the One Who governs everything.

Words on the Word

I’ve loved this prayer of Thomas Merton’s since I visited Abbey of Gethsemani as a teenager:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the…

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to Penetrate beneath the surface of a man’s life

 

“The whole purpose of spiritual direction is
to penetrate beneath the surface of a man’s life,
to get behind the façade of conventional gestures and attitudes which he presents to the world,
and to bring out his inner spiritual freedom,
his inmost truth,
which is what we call the likeness of Christ in his soul.”

– Thomas Merton

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Preceding

Easier to find guides than someone to be with you in a discerning, prayerful companionship

Learning from ourselves

Often it are the setbacks that bring people back with their feet on the ground and have they rethink about their position in this world and in their life.

The most difficult part in our life is often to liberate ourself from the chain of vanity that may have caught us, and to get to learn that we better have to become an instrument in the Hands of our Creator, following His path He has laid out in front of us.

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To remember

“You teach best what you most need to learn.”  = line from Richard Bach’s book ‘Illusions’ running through mind

Marianne Williamson frequently shares very personal stories about her honest trials through life which makes her advice all the more more palatable

• We share in our own ways + we learn in our own ways

 

today’s lesson = Humility.

• ego wants to (and has been) defending self, making excuses, + trying to justify own actions
• making way through personal feelings of remorse, embarrassment, + confusio
• often advice we give to others = exact advice we need ourselves.
• hold ourselves to some ridiculous standard of “perfection” => too self-conscious to admit struggle with things we advise others to do.
• listen to ourselves +  realize things we passionately want to teach other people = things we, ourselves, truly want to learn + embody =>  vigilant level of self awareness + honesty

enhance + deepen relationships with others + ability to impact them in a positive way

1)  Be Honest

2)  Have Compassion

3)  Stop Trying to be Perfect =>  sense of freedom

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Preceding

I is for Incompleteness

Timeless Insights on Humility

Timeless Insights on Humility

I is for Incompleteness

How often our thoughts do not bring us to think why we did not do this or that and did not become this or that? How many of us dream not of a magnificent career and when we start working dream of reaching the top one day. But when would that top being reached?

More than once we receive a figural slap in the face, and several time we are put hard on the ground, making us aware that perhaps we want to much of ourselves or that we have a little ‘too big me’ in us.

Humility is often a trait that is difficult to achieve, but we can better place our hope in it, to feel happy, than to keep on struggling in the swamp of our vanity.

Hot Dogs and Marmalade

The victory of humility is the acceptance of our own incompleteness,
in order that He may make us complete in His own way.

Thomas Merton, The Silent Life

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At least half of our Playmobile guys didn’t have hair.

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Kindred Support

The Person Who Cannot Despair

Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. It is reached when a person deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost…Despair is the ultimate development of a pride so great and so stiff-necked that it selects the absolute misery of damnation rather than accept happiness from the hands of God and thereby acknowledge that He is above us and that we are not capable of fulfilling our destiny ourselves. But a person who is truly humble cannot despair, because in a humble person there is no longer any such thing as self-pity.

“The desert is the home of despair.  And despair, now, is everywhere.  Let us not think that our interior solitude consists in the acceptance of defeat.  We cannot escape anything by consenting tacitly to be defeated.  Despair is an abyss without bottom.  Do not think to close it by consenting to it and trying to forget you have consented.

This, then, is our desert: to live facing despair, but not to consent.  To trample it down under hope in the Cross.  To wage  war against despair unceasingly.  That war is our wilderness.  If we wage it courageously, we will find Christ at our side.  If we cannot face it, we will never find Him.”  (Thoughts in Solitude)

The Seven Storey Mountain (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

– Thomas Merton (1915–1968),  French-born writer who converted to Catholicism after a long and complicated intellectual journey becoming a Trappist monk, was one of the most well-known Catholic writers of the 20th century. He was the author of more than 60 books, including the story of his conversion, Seven Storey Mountain, a modern spiritual classic.

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Find also to read:

1. Cosmos creator and human destiny
2. Control your destiny or somebody else will
3. Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair
4. No time for immorality
5. Old age
6. Companionship
7. Not following the tradition of man
8. Looking for True Spirituality 8 Measuring Up
9. Trusting, Faith, Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #10 Prayer #8 Condition
10. What Jesus did: First things first

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Related articles

• The Seven Storey Mountain (Thomas Merton, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1948, 429 pages) (rabidreader.typepad.com)
  In 1941, a brilliant, good-looking young man decided to give up a promising literary career in New York to enter a monastery in Kentucky, from where he proceeded to become one of the most influential writers of this century. Talk about losing your life in order to find it. Thomas Merton‘s first book, The Seven Storey Mountain, describes his early doubts, his conversion to a Catholic faith of extreme certainty, and his decision to take life vows as a Trappist monk.
• …the desert… & Thomas Merton (rosesintherubble.com)
  Here’s to waging war against despair with Courage & Hope from the Presence of Jesus next to us, above us, below us, around us…& within our hearts, filling us with Love (the Heavenly Kind) that makes flowers grow – even in a desert!
• Potential and Despair (curmudgeons.net)
  In despairing over something, [a person] really despaired over himself, and now he wants to be rid of himself.
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  If he had become Caesar, he would despairingly get rid of himself, but he did not become Caesar and cannot despairingly get rid of himself. Essentially, he is just as despairing, for he does not save his self, is not himself.
• A Glory followed by Despair (hananabila.wordpress.com)
  When you feel like everything you do is wrong
  Where you feel like you should do one sacrifice
  Where it all ends, where we all are sad
  When comfort isn’t enough for those in despair
• Quote of the Day 08 Sept 2013 ~ Peace of Solitude (marcgilbert.com)
  The world of men has forgotten the joys of silence, the peace of solitude, which is necessary, to some extent, for the fullness of human living.
• Thomas Merton on self-idolatry and solitude (resistanceandrenewal.net)
  I have just finished reading The Seven Storey Mountain, the spiritual autobiography of Thomas Merton. Its a beautiful book which chronicles his journey through childhood and student days to becoming a Trappist monk. Merton was born in 1915 and experienced an eclectic upbringing in USA, France and London. However, his
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  He locates the dangers of ambition down to the most basic of Christian temptations, a ‘self-idolatry’ which fuels a relentless need for achievementearly life was marked by tragedy as both his mother and father died when he was young.
• Typewriter of the moment: Thomas Merton (timpanogos.wordpress.com)
  One of Thomas Merton’s typewriters sits on display at the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University, in Louisville, Kentucky.
• Political orphaning of moderate unionism is source of wonder and despair. (sluggerotoole.com)
  What party represents the vast majority of unionists — those who are not Orangemen, bandsmen, gunmen, Bible-bashers, flag-flyers, bonfire-builders or all the other overlapping little constituencies that unionist politicians never dare to disappoint?
• The Franciscan Heart of Thomas Merton: A New Look at the Spiritual Inspiration of His Life, Thought, and Writing by Daniel P. Horan, O.F.M. (evolutionarymystic.wordpress.com)
  In The Franciscan Heart of Thomas Merton, Franciscan friar and author Daniel Horan shows how, both before and after he became a Trappist monk, Merton’s life was shaped by his love for St. Francis and for the Franciscan spiritual and intellectual tradition. Given recent renewed interest in St. Francis, this timely resource is both informative and practical, revealing a previously hidden side of Merton that will inspire a new generation of Christians to live richer, deeper, and more justice-minded lives of faith.