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
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Love finds truth
Categories
First love the truth
It is clear, then, that to love others well we must first love the truth.
The truth we must love in loving our brothers is the concrete destiny and sanctity that are willed for them by the love of God.
The truth I must love in my brother is God Himself, living in him. I must seek the love of the Spirit of God breathing in him.
— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
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Neon-lit pain
We draw near to him by following him even on clumsy and reluctant feet and without knowing more than two cents’ worth at first about what is involved in following him — into the seventy-five-mile-an-hour, neon-lit pain of our world.
Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons, “The Sign by the Highway”
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The empty place
I think…there is…hope that, if not tomorrow or the next day, then some fine day, somehow, life will finally give us the present that, when we open it, will turn out to be the one we have waited for so long, the one that will fill the empty place, which is the peace that passeth all understanding, which is the truth, salvation, whatever we want to call it. But one by one, as we open the presents, no matter how rich and wondrous they are, we discover that not one of them by itself, nor even all of them taken together, is the one of our deepest desiring — that ultimately, although her face is beautiful and draws us to her, life by herself does not have that final present to give.
Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons, “The Sign by the Highway”
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Immigration status
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
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becoming flame 