The brutal reality is that we seem to prefer destructive means: not that we love war for its own sake, but because we are blindly and hopelessly involved in needs and attitudes that make war inevitable.
--Thomas Merton, Peace in the Post Christian Era
(Photo Credit: Christine C. Reed, Poppy, 2009)
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2 comments:
"The fire of love for souls loved by God, consumes like the fire of God's love, and it is the same love.
It burns you up with a hunger for the supernatural happiness first of the people that you know, then of people you have barely heard of, and finally of everybody."
~~~Thomas Merton,
"A Book of Hours"
"I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven."
~~~Jesus Christ,
Luke 10:18
In the process of getting booted out of heaven, fully 1/3 of angels went with Satan. This is the evil and despair of Merton, you quote.
Keep in mind, 2/3 of angels remained!
This is the Merton of love and hope, I quote.
We are ALL Merton's, with a gemini personality mixed of BOTH extremes.
The love prevails, if for no other reason, than there is so much more of it; 2/3 to 1/3 seems about right.
Look in the mirror to see the reflection of your own ratio.
Note:["your" is plural, not directed to anyone in particular as in singular]
Ahh, how I love and treasure the mystical wisdom of Merton.
Some favourite quotes of mine:
"It is not only our hatred of others that is dangerous but also and above all our hatred of ourselves: particularly that hatred of ourselves which is too deept and too powerful to be consciously faced. For it is this which makes us see our own evil in others and unable to see it in ourselves."
"Despair is the absolute extreme self-love. It is reached when a man deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost. In every man there is hidden some root of despair because in every man there is pride that vegetates and springs weeds and rank flowers of self-pity as soon as our own resources fail us."
~ New Seeds of Contemplation
I think of this last quote, and that it means selecting despair over the absolute misery of damnation over happiness [which comes from God], when I feel myself slipping into despair.
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