“If you are waiting for someone to come along and feed you the contemplative life with a spoon, you are going to wait a long time, especially in America. You had better renounce your inertia, pray for a little imagination, ask the Lord to awaken your creative freedom, and consider some of the following possibilities:

“1. It is possible that by the sacrifice of seemingly good economic opportunities, you could move into the country or to a small town where you would have more time to think. This would involve the acceptance of a relative poverty perhaps. ….

“2. Wherever you may be, it is always possible to give yourself the benefit of those parts of the day which are quiet because the world does not value them. One of these is the small hours of the morning. [getting up “around four or five in the morning”]….

“3. It should be too obvious to mention that Sunday is set apart by nature and by the tradition of the Church as a day of contemplation. ….

“4. Whenever one seeks the light of contemplation, he commits himself by that very fact to a certain spiritual discipline. … But it would be a mistake for a man or woman with all the obligations and hardships of secular life to live in the world like a cloistered monk. To try to do this would be an illusion. ….

“5. It follows from this that for the married Christian, his married life is essentially bound up with his contemplation. This is inevitable. ….

“In conclusion, then, though it is right that the Christian layman try to keep his life ordered and peaceful, and to some extent recollected, what he needs most of all is a contemplative life centered in the mystery of marriage. The development of such a spirituality is very necessary and much to be desired.”

Merton, Thomas. The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation. Edited and with an Introduction by William H. Shannon. (NY: HarperOne, 2003), pp. 137-141. [Merton wrote this in 1959]