I’m finishing up Merton’s “Thoughts in Solitude” and just wanted to share a few quotes I’m really enjoying…
“My life is listening, His is speaking. My salvation is to hear and respond. For this, my life must be silent. Hence, my silence is my salvation.”
“A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live. Thus, if one is called to be solitary, he will stop wondering how he is to live and start living peacefully only when he is in solitude. But if one is not called to a solitary life, the more he is alone the more will he worry about living and forget to live. When we are not living up to our true vocation, thought deadens our life, or substitutes itself for life, or gives in to life so that our life drowns out our thinking and stifles the voice of conscience. When we find our vocation – thought and life are one. Suppose one has found completeness in his true vocation. Now everything is in unity, in order, at peace. Now work no longer interferes with prayer or prayer with work. Now contemplation no longer needs to be a special “state” that removes one from the ordinary things going on around him for God penetrates all. One does not have to think of giving an account of oneself to anyone but Him.”
“If our life is poured out in useless words, we will never hear anything, and in the end, because we have said everything before we had anything to say we shall be left speeches at the moment of our greatest decision.”
