Upon our hope, therefore, depends the liberty of the whole universe. Because our hope is the pledge of a new heaven and a new earth, in which all things will be what they were meant to be.
— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island, Sentences on Hope
If my hope
Is the toe hold
The universe needs
To stay on the face
Of liberty;
Though barely a seam,
May it remain
As steadfast
As the One
Who made it
The anchor
Of my soul.
dw
Copyright © 2019, becomingflame.com
This is the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil — disgust with the things we have misused and hatred of ourselves for misusing them.
— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island, Sentences on Hope
That tree, you know the one,
where Eve got sucker punched
and Adam melted away,
didn’t even stand up for her,
distracted, maybe, by the spectre
of knowing her nakedness
apart from her soul,
thus beginning the dehumanizing
of one image of God by another,
the desecration of created things,
the discounting of God who made them;That tree, you know the one,
that bides its time
while we distract ourselves
knowing the distraction will quiet
and we will one day stare and swallow
at the noose our own demand
to experience something other than God’s provision,
the difference between Good and Evil,
has tied for us –
we the condemner and the condemned;That tree, you know the one,
where our discounted God
hung on our behalf
to show us pure Good,
to cut us free.
dw
Copyright © 2019, becomingflame.com
It would be a sin to place any limit upon our hope in God. We must love Him without measure. All sin is rooted in the failure of love. All sin is a withdrawal of love from God, in order to love something else. Sin sets boundaries to our hope, and locks our love in prison.
— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island, Sentences on Hope
Sin:
exchanging our greatest love
for something less,
hoping for less than what we have assurance of,
settling for even less than we hope for,
accepting a story of non-provision,
covetousness rewriting hope’s history
into a bleak tragedy
of love beyond our reach
just outside the bars
of the unlocked cell
we are dying in
dw
Copyright © 2019, becomingflame.com
Better than hoping for anything from the Lord, besides His love, let us place all our hope in His love itself. This hope is as sure as God Himself. It can never be confounded.
— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island, Sentences on Hope
It doesn’t matter what we do,
you and I,
as long as we are together.No need for lavish blessings
or miraculous signs;
just You hovering near me will do.dw
Copyright © 2019, becomingflame.com
Over my shoulder, a glance of the eye
Catches Cancer crabbing across the sky
Devouring time and a fetus named John;Time two brothers might have played, gone to school,
Become men, raised families, and grown old,
Always together, apart sixteen months,
James, now asleep, and his hoped for brother;A fetus once kicking, its fingers formed,
Its days twelve times seven, all dark,
Etched only in memory, a father’s worn face,
A doctor’s log, a mother’s heaving grief.Summer, 1985
dwCopyright © 2019, becomingflame.com
Thinking of E and J…peace and healing to you…
becoming flame 