A Year with Thomas Merton
Daily Meditations from His Journals
January 1A Breath of Zen
Fidelity to grace in my life is fidelity to simplicity, rejecting ambition
and analysis and elaborate thought, or even elaborate concern.
A breath of Zen blows all these cobwebs out the window.
It is certainly true that what is needed is to get back to the
"original face" and drop off all the piled-up garments of thought
that do not fit me and are not "mine" -- but to take only what is
nameless.
I have been absurdly burdened since the beginning of the year
with the illusions of "great responsibility" and of a task to be done.
Actually whatever work is to be done is God's work and not
mine, and I will not help matters, only hinder them, by too much
care.
Sunrise -- an event that calls forth solemn music in the very
depths of one's being, as if one's whole being had to attune itself
to the cosmos and praise God for a new day, praise Him in the
name of all the beings that ever were or ever will be -- as though
now upon me falls the responsibility of seeing what all my ancestors
have seen, and acknowledging it, and praising God, so that,
whether or not they praised God back then, th ... read full excerpt from: A Year with Thomas Merton ebook
