Dangerous Activity

Contemplation is a very dangerous activity.

It not only brings us face to face with God. It brings us, as well, face to face with the world, face to face with the self.

And then, of course, something must be done.

Nothing stays the same once we have found the God within.  

We carry the world in our hearts: the oppression of all peoples, the suffering of our friends, the burdens of our enemies, the raping of the Earth, the hunger of the starving, the joy of every laughing child.

Joan Chittister
Source: 30goodminutes.org

Add your thoughts at inward/outward

Christ in the Desert

Over twenty years ago, I accom- panied two dear friends on a pilgrimage of sorts to a little-known, out-of-the-way Benedictine monastery hidden away in a canyon northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico. 

For five days and nights we lived with the monks of the Monastery of Christ in the Desert.

To say the least, the experience proved unforgettable.  My mind drifts back to that formative week very often. 

The older I get and the more I am in touch with the poor and those living on the tough and expanding margins of our culture, the more I seem to go back to my experience in the desert. 

Our stay happened to fall in the midst of Lent.  As a result, we were up all hours of the night praying our way through the Psalms with the monks, all of whom seemed unafffected by the rigor of our schedule. 

I remember the solitude and the deafening quite.  Upon my return to Dallas, I realized just how loud and intrusive everything about the city seemed to me. 

I remember how easy it was to think there and how well I slept on my straw mattress spread out on a narrow shelf in my private cell. 

I recall a conversation with one monk.  I asked him why he chose to live in such isolation in such an unusual community.  He replied, "I am here to pray for churches in Christ everywhere." 

For some reason I'm back there again today.  It is a good place to stop and to consider what is important. 

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An Abba said: "No one can build a house from the top down; rather, you build the foundation first and then build upwards... the foundation means your neighbor whom you must win, and you ought to start from there. For all the commandments of Christ depend on this."

-Sayings of the Desert Fathers

Merton travels

Merton. . .again

More on Merton

Thomas Merton

Merton on humanity

I appreciate Troy Jackson's analysis of the importance of the thought of Thomas Merton, the spiritual leader who died 40 years ago this year.

What was it about 1968 and the loss of so many significant people?

Good focus for this Sunday:

I grew up an evangelical, so part of my spiritual DNA is to act first and pray later. I had few models of men and women in my church who practiced regular reflection, contemplation, and solitude. Fewer still took seriously the call to simplicity. Thankfully, over the past few decades, I have learned from and tried to emulate the spiritual depth found in Merton’s volumes of contemplative writings, and through the integrity of his life.

Merton’s words stand the test of time. He called a world filled with greed, violence, prejudice, and fear to pursue dialogue, silence, solitude, and prayer. He questioned the values and priorities of modernity, claiming modern

"mass man … lives not only below the level of grace, but below the level of nature—below his own humanity. No longer in contact with the created world or with himself, out of touch with reality of nature, he lives in the world of collective obsessions, the world of systems and fictions with which modern man has surrounded himself. In such a world, man’s life is no longer even a seasonal cycle. It’s a linear flight into nothingness, a flight from reality and from God, without purpose and without objective, except to keep moving, to keep from having to face reality. "

Continue reading here.

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