Monday, May 21, 2012

Thomas Merton

      There is no neutrality between gratitude and ingratitude.  Those who are not grateful soon begin to complain of everything.  Those who do not love, hate.  In the spiritual life there is no such thing as an indifference to love or hate.  That is why tepidity (which seems to be indifferent) is so detestable.  It is hate disguised as love.

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    A humility that freezes our being and frustrates all healthy activity is not humility at all, but a disguised form of pride.

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     But as far as solidarity with other people goes, I am committed to nothing except a very simple and elemental kind of solidarity, which is perhaps without significance politically, but which I feel the only kind that works at all.  This is to pick out the people whom I recognize in a crowd and hail them and rejoice with them for a moment that we speak the same language.  Whether they be communists or whatever else they may be.  Whatever they may believe on the surface, whatever may be the formulas to which they are committed.  I am less and less worried by that people say or think they say, and more and more concerned with what they are able to be. 

Amen, Brother Merton, Amen.

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