05-19-2008, 04:55 PM
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Administrator
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Posts: 94
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In the World?
The way to find the real "world" is not merely to measure and observe what is outside us, but to discover our own inner ground. For that is where the world is, first of all: in my deepest self.
But there I find the world to be quite different from the "obligatory answers." This "ground," this "world" where I am mysteriously present at once to my own self and to the freedoms of all other men, is not a visible, objective and determined structure with fixed laws and demands. It is a living and self-creating mystery of which I am myself a part, to which I am myself my own unique door.
When I find the world in my own ground, it is impossible for me to be alienated by it. It is precisely the obligatory answers which insist on showing the world as totally other than me and my neighbors, which alienate me from myself and from my neighbors. Hence I see no reason for our compulsion to manufacture ever newer and shinier sets of obligatory answers.
Thomas Merton. Contemplation in A World of Action (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1973: 170
Thought for the Day
The world has in fact no terms of its own. It dictates no terms to man. We and our world interpenetrate. If anything, the world exists for us, and we exist for ourselves. It is only in assuming full responsibility for our world, for our lives and for ourselves that we can be said to live really for God.
Thomas Merton. Contemplation in A World of Action (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1973: 169
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