“Man has an instinctive need for harmony and peace, for tranquility, order and meaning. None of those seem to be the most salient characteristics of modern society. A book written in a monastery where the traditions and rites of a more contemplative age are still alive and still practiced, could not help but remind men that there had once existed a more leisurely and more spiritual way of life – and that this was the way of their ancestors. Thus even into the confused pattern of Western life is woven a certain memory of contemplation. It is a memory so vague and so remote that it is hardly understood, and yet it can awaken the hope of recovering inner peace. In this hope, modern man can perhaps entertain, for a brief time, the dream of a contemplative life and of a higher spiritual state of quiet, of rest, of untroubled joy.”
From Introductions East & West: The Foreign Prefaces of Thomas Merton, edited by Robert E. Daggy
(Unicorn Press Inc., Greesboro, NC, 1981), page 65.
It’s tough to find harmony and peace especially in this season of fabrication and distortion known as American politics. If you are looking for peace I suggest you turn off cable news of any kind, limit what news you read from any source and sit quietly with a good book maybe even scripture and meditate on it. Sit quietly and concentrate on your breath. Jesus said, “the kingdom of God is within you.” If you sit quietly listening to your breath you will begin to experience that which Thomas Merton is describing in the quote above. Try it!
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peace, tranquility, contemplation, merton
Thank you for this posting.
After you posted “Thomas Merton Reflection” I have been desperately attempting to locate his book “What is Contemplation!”
Wonderful post!