There is a false and momentary happiness in self-satisfaction, but it always leads to sorrow because it narrows and deadens our spirit.
— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
This follows from last week’s post and reinforces the connection with addiction.
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A happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found: for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough to make us happy.
— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
And if he is the truth and the life, we will find it out soon enough for ourselves, you can be sure of that. If we want to find it out, if we are willing to draw near in whatever idiotic way we can, all our reservations and doubts notwithstanding, because little by little we find out then that to be where he is, to go where he goes, to see through eyes and work with hands like his is to feel like ourselves at last, is to become fully ourselves at last and fully each other’s at last, and to become finally more even than that: to become fully his at last.
Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons, “The Sign by the Highway”
What is the truth? It is not the answer to any question that we know how to ask. Can there be a truth that saves, can there be salvation, for those who have learned of life not to believe in salvation? Only on the other side of pain…the pained embarrassment at the words Jesus Saves, which at its heart is a pained embarrassment at our own nakedness and incompleteness…pain that brought tears to the eyes…of hope betrayed…the pain of the good thief, which is the pain of surrender, the pain of acknowledging finally our utter helplessness to save ourselves.”
Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons, “The Sign by the Highway”
I must become convinced and penetrated by the realization that without my love for [another] they may perhaps not achieve the things God has willed for them.
My love must be to them the “sacrament” of the mysterious and infinitely selfless love God has for them.
The words I speak to them must be no other than the words of Christ Who deigns to reveal Himself to them in me.
— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
If we are going to love others at all, we must make up our minds to love them well. Otherwise our love is a delusion.
We must first of all purify our love by renouncing the pleasure of loving as an end in itself. As long as pleasure is our end, we will be dishonest with ourselves and with those we love. We will not seek their good, but our own pleasure.
— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
For love must not only seek the truth in the lives of those around us; it must find it there.
— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
