To Become Attached To The Experience Of

If We Live With Possibilities We Are Exiles From The Present Which Is Given Us By God To Be Our Own, Homeless And Displaced In A Future Or A Past Which Are Not Ours Because They Are Always Beyond Our Reach. The Present Is Our Right Place, And We Can Lay Hands On Whatever It Offers Us.

Jesus Lived And Died In Vain If He Did Not Teach Us To Regulate The Whole Of Life By The Eternal Law Of Love. Gandhi, Quoted In Merton, P. 38

We Too Often Forget That Faith Is A Matter Of Questioning And Struggle Before It Becomes One Of Certitude And Peace. You Have To Doubt And Reject Everything Else In Order To Believe Firmly In Christ, And After You Have Begun To Believe, Your Faith Itself Must Be Tested And Purified. Christianity Is Not Merely A Set Of Forgone Conclusions. Faith Tends To Be Defeated By The Burning Presence Of God In Mystery, And Seeks Refuge From Him, Flying To Comfortable Social Forms And Safe Convictions In Which Purification Is No Longer An Inner Battle But A Matter Of Outward Gesture.

In Louisville, At The Corner Of Fourth And Walnut, In The Center Of The Shopping District, I Was Suddenly Overwhelmed With The Realization That I Loved All Those People, That They Were Mine And I Theirs, That We Could Not Be Alien To One Another Even Though We Were Total Strangers.

It's A Risky Thing To Pray And The Danger Is That Our Very Prayers Get Between God And Us. The Great Thing In Prayer Is Not To Pray, But To Go Directly To God. . . . The Fact Is, Though, That If You Descend Into The Depths Of Your Own Spirit And Arrive Somewhere Near The Center Of What You Are, You Are Confronted With The Inescapable Truth That, At The Very Root Of Your Existence, You Are In Constant And Immediate Contact With The Infinite Power Of God.