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signs of the times, the end times

“We live in the time of no room, which is the time of the end. The time when everyone is obsessed with lack of time, lack of space, with saving time, conquering space, projecting into time and space the anguish produced within them by the technological furies of size, volume, quantity, speed, number, price, power, and acceleration. ….

“As the end approaches, there is no room for nature. The cities crowd it off the face of the earth.

“As the end approaches, there is no room for quiet. There is no room for solitude. There is no room for thought. There is no room for attention, for the awareness of our state.

“In the time of the end, there is no room for man.” (pp. 280-281)

Merton, Thomas. “The Time of the End Is the Time of No Room.” (1965) in Selected Essays. Edited with an introduction by Patrick F. O’Connell. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013), pages 280-281.

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rigid thoughts

“It is the refusal of alternatives–a compulsive state of mind which one might call the ‘ultimatum complex’–which makes wars in order to force the unconditional acceptance of one oversimplified interpretation of reality. The mission of Christian humility in social life is not merely to edify, but to keep minds open to many alternatives. The rigidity of a certain type of Christian thought has seriously impaired this capacity, which nonviolence may recover.”

Merton, Thomas. “Blessed Are the Meek.” (1966) in Selected Essays. Edited with an introduction by Patrick F. O’Connell. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013), page 292.

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requirements for clear thinking

“Where there is no critical perspective, no detached observation, no time to ask the pertinent questions, how can one avoid being deluded and confused? Someone has to try to keep his head clear of static and preserve the interior solitude and silence that are essential for independent thought.”

Merton, Thomas. “Events and Pseudo-Events Letter to a Southern Churchman.” (1966) in Selected Essays. Edited with an introduction by Patrick F. O’Connell. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013), page 300.

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comparing apples to tricycles

“When we set Christianity and Buddhism side by side, we must try to find the points where a genuinely common ground between the two exists. At the present moment, this is no easy task. In fact it is practically impossible. ….

“The immense variety of forms taken by thought, experience, worship, moral practice, in both Buddhism and Christianity make all comparisons haphazard….”

Merton, Thomas. “A Christian Looks at Zen.” (1967) in Selected Essays. Edited with an introduction by Patrick F. O’Connell. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013), page 349.

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linked in a unity

“Those with a passionate sense of the divine milieu cannot bear to find things about them obscure, tepid, and empty, things which should be full and vibrant with God. They are paralyzed by the thought of the innumerable spirits which are linked to theirs in the unity of the same world, but are not yet fully kindled by the flame of the divine presence.”

Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre. The Divine Milieu. Translated by Siôn Cowell. (Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 2012), page 107.

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a writer’s audience

“In my literary career I have escaped trying to write for the public or for editors; I have written for myself. I have not asked, ‘What does the public want?’ I have only asked, ‘What do I want to say? What is there in my heart craving for expression? What have I lived or felt or thought that is my own, and has its root in my inmost being?’ ”

Burroughs, John. The Writings of John Burroughs. 15 vols. The Riverby Edition. (Boston and NY: Houghton Mifflin Co., The Riverside Press Cambridge, 1904-1913), Vol. 15, page 5.

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footnotes for the faithful

“The literary compositions of studious premodern Christians place much less emphasis upon authorship than do those of curious moderns. …. The literary works of the doctores ecclesiae are very often saturated with allusions to and echoes of Scripture and the works of their predecessors, many of them not marked in any way, but instead woven invisibly and indivisibly into the fabric of their own words. This lack of marking of alien words is often because the echoes and allusions are thought sufficiently obvious not to need marking….”

Griffiths, Paul J. Intellectual Appetite : a Theological Grammar. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), page 182.

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working from and into solitude

“But I know what I have discovered: that the kind of work I once feared most because I thought it would interfere with ‘solitude’ is, in fact, the only true path to solitude. One must be in some sense a hermit before the care of souls can serve to lead one further into the desert. But once God has called you to solitude, everything you touch leads you further into solitude. Everything that affects you builds you into a hermit, as long as you do not insist on doing the work yourself and building your own kind of hermitage.”

Merton, Thomas. The Sign of Jonas. (San Diego: Harcourt, Inc., 1981), pages 333-334. Entry written 29 November 1951.

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personal prayer or churchly prayer?

“The use of formal prayers can, under certain circumstances, be a help even for a small family group. But often a ritual becomes only an evasion of real prayer. the wealth of churchly forms and thought may easily lead us away from our own prayer; the prayers then become beautiful and profound, but not genuine. Helpful as the Church’s tradition of prayer is for learning to pray, it nevertheless cannot take the place of prayer that I owe to God this day. Here the poorest mumbling utterance can be better than the best-formulated prayer.”

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together. (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1954), page 65.

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tweaking the workspace

“Ah, if one could work in the heart of nature, one’s window open on a fair landscape, so placed that when one was tired one could enjoy a few minutes in the green country; or, if one’s thought was at a standstill ask a suggestion from the mountains, from the company of trees and clouds, from the passing animals, in stead of painfully enduring one’s dull moods — I am sure that the work produced would be doubled, and that it would be far more attractive, far more human.”

Sertillanges, Antonin G., O.P. The Intellectual Life: its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1987), page 247.