"Many poets are not poets for the same reason many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves. They never get around to being the particular poet or the particular monk they are intended to be by God. They never become the man or the artist who is called for by all the circumstances of their individual lives.
They wear out their minds and bodies in a hopeless endeavor to have somebody else's experiences or write somebody else's poems or possess somebody else's spirituality.
...humility consists in being precisely the person you actually are before God, and since no two people are alike, if you have the humility to be yourself you will not be like anyone else in the whole universe.
To the truly humble man the ordinary ways and customs and habits of men are not a matter for conflict. The saints do not get excited about the things that people eat and drink, wear on their bodies, or hang on the walls of their houses. To make conformity or non-conformity with others in these accidents a matter of life and death is to fill your interior life with confusion and noise.
He is able to see quite clearly what is useful to him may be useless for somebody else, and what helps others to be saints might ruin him. That is why humility brings with it a deep refinement of spirit, a peacefulness, a tact and a common sense without which there is no sane morality.
It is not humility to insist of being someone that you are not. It is as much as saying that you know better than God who you are and who you ought to be. How do you expect to arrive at the end of your own journey if you take the road to another man's city?"
Thomas Merton,
"New Seeds of Contemplation"
That quote is so profound...and true...thanks for sharing it!
ReplyDeleteWow...I really needed to hear that right now!
ReplyDeleteMy wife is reading "No Man is and Island" and loves it, and "The Seven Storey Mountain" arrived two days ago. If this quote is any indication, it should be good reading...
In fact, I was feeling a significant amount of anxiety (related in a roundabout way to this quote) up to this point, and I'm feeling better already!
ReplyDeleteI actually like me.....and I feel quite peaceful about that. I surely couldn't say that a dozen years back............
ReplyDeleteI dunno, I tend to think that 'being myself' is what gets me into trouble in the first place (being a sinner and all)...And as far as finding my 'own journey', I think I'd rather follow on a well-tread path. But maybe I'm misreading Merton (or I'm just a crank).
ReplyDelete