Knowing Our Source Monday, December 10, 2018 Thomas Merton Day edit

Knowing Our Source

Monday, December 10, 2018

Thomas Merton Day

Contemplation is the highest expression of [human] intellectual and spiritual life. It's life itself, awake, active, aware
 that it's alive.💔

 It is 

spiritual 

awe at the 

sacredness,

 spontaneous wonder, awareness of life, 

of being. It is gratitude for life. 

It is a vivid 

realization 

of the fact that

life & being in us proceed from an 

invisible, transcendent, infinitely 

abundant Source. 💔

Contemplation is 

awareness of the 

reality of that 

origination- 🌈. 

It knows the 

Source, 

obscurely, 

inexplicably w/a

certitude that goes both beyond 

reason  simple faith... 

Contemplation is

knowledge/experience 
of the transcendent

 God. It knows God by 

seeming to touch Him

It knows Him as if one

had been invisibly 

touched by Him. . .💔

 God is pure Reality the source of 

all that is real! Accordingly

Contemplation is a sudden gift 

of awareness, an awakening to 

the Real within all that is real.💔

A vivid awareness 

of infinite Being at 

the roots of our 

own limited being.

 An awareness of our 

contingent reality as

received as a present

 from God, as free gift

 This is the existential contact of which we

 speak when we use the metaphor

 of being“touched by God.”

Contemplation is the response to a call 

 from Him who has no voice. He speak 

 in everything that 

is & He most of all

speaks/ the depth

 of our own being: 

for we ourselves 

are words of His.💔

 We are words 

that are meant 

to respond to, 

to answer, to 

echo, in some

 way to contain

 and signify Him.

 Contemplation is this echo. It is the deep 

resonance in the inmost 

center of our spirit. Our

 life loses its separate 

voice & resounds w/ the 

majesty and mercy of the

 hidden Living One. 💔

The only true joy on earth is to escape 

from the prison of our ownfalse self, & 

enter by love into 

union w/ the Life 

who dwells and 

sings within the 

essence of all

 creatures & in the core of our own souls. 

 In His love we possess all things & 

enjoy fruition of them, finding Him in 

them all. As we go about the 

world, everything we meet, 

 see, hear and touch, far from 

defiling, purifies us

 and plants in us

  something more of

 contemplation & 

 heaven.