Category: Poetry

Categories
hope Other Writings Poetry

Hope deprives us

 

Hope deprives us of everything that is not God, in order that all things may serve their true purpose as means to bring us to God.

— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island, Sentences on Hope

cropped-david-monje-2199131.jpg

What is this hope that dashes all hopes,
yet is the only sure remedy for hopelessness?

An anchor that holds us, drowns us,
baptizes us clean, clean,
cleaner than we ever wanted to be
(but always wanted to be)
in water that is life itself
if we will only drown ourselves in it,
suck it in knowing it is the death of us,
us as beings with the right to choose,
for our own selves,
what we hope for,
even if what we hope for
would be the death of us.

dw

Copyright © 2018, becomingflame.com

Categories
Poetry

Immigration status (re-post)

We would be,
all of us,
detained at heaven’s border,
seeking life,
fleeing death,
illegal immigrants all;

Detained and
forever separated
from our loved ones;

Were it not
for God’s outrageous mercy,
his willingness to spend
without limit
his very life
for us
so that we
could be
not only citizens of his realm,
but his very sons and daughters,
sharing his home,
his table,
his very life.

dw

Copyright © 2018, all rights reserved.

 

Samuel, we miss you and are praying for you and Julia and Daniel. We want to see your family together again; we want you to worship here with us again. God be with you.

Categories
love Poetry

Love that isn’t

 

To love another is to will what is really good for him. Such love must be based on truth. A love that sees no distinction between good and evil, but loves blindly merely for the sake of loving, is hatred, rather than love. To love blindly is to love selfishly, because the goal of such love is not the real advantage of the beloved but only the exercise of love in our own souls.

— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

Continue reading “Love that isn’t”
Categories
Poetry

What will be your truth?

If ends justify your means
what will be the meaning and justice of your end?

If power is about keeping power
what, when you lose it, will keep and empower you?

If you forsake truth to prosper,
what will be your truth when prosperity forsakes you?

dw

Copyright © 2018, all rights reserved.

Categories
love Poetry

Without my love

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

Continue reading “Without my love”