Tag: real self

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Resetting our real selves

Maybe this time when God has the attention of the whole world…this time of forced rethinking and resetting…maybe it’s a good time to go back for a moment to the early days of becoming flame and the very basic questions many of us are asking ourselves now – what really matters? who are we as a people? who are we individually?

Grace and peace to you in this time of trial…

dw

Thomas Merton on the ‘real self’

I consider that the spiritual life is the life of [one’s] real self, the life of that interior self whose flame is so often allowed to be smothered under the ashes of anxiety and futile concern.

— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

Full original post here:  Thomas Merton on the ‘real self’ | becoming flame

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hope the real self

More courage needed

smoke in dark room

 

To find “ourselves” then is to find not only our poor, limited, perplexed souls, but to find the power of God that raised Christ from the dead and “built us together in Him unto a habitation of God in the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:22).

— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

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hope the real self

Do I have the courage?

 

I cannot discover God in myself and myself in Him unless I have the courage to face myself exactly as I am, with all my limitations, and to accept others as they are, with all their limitations.

— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

Do I have the courage to admit, to accept, to own how broken I am?

Will I let myself feel it, not just assent to it?

Though it feel scary as hell and shameful as sin, for the prospect of finding God in there somewhere, loving me and holding me, am I willing to do it?

Am I willing to do it as many times as it takes…for the love of God?

Am I willing to try again if it was too much for me last time?

Maybe then, just maybe, I might see you in a different light, knowing you are facing the same fears, the same questions, the same choices…the same God.

Maybe, just maybe, I might meet you where you are, accept you, even love you, as you are.

Grace and peace to us…

dw

 

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the real self

Thomas Merton on ‘salvation’

Neon sign on building "Jesus Saves"

 

What every man looks for in life is his own salvation and the salvation of the [ones] he lives with. By salvation I mean first of all the full discovery of who he himself really is. Then I mean something of the fulfillment of his own God-given powers, in the love of others and of God. I mean also the discovery that he cannot find himself in himself alone, but that he must find himself in and through others.

— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

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the real self

Identify yourself!

US Passport

 

You cannot tell me who I am, and I cannot tell you who you are. If you do not know your own identity, who is going to identify you? Others can give you a name or a number, but they can never tell you who you really are. That is something you yourself can only discover from within.

— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

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