Monday, March 16, 2009

to those of us who struggle...

How many people are there in the world of today who have "lost their faith" along with the vain hopes and illusions of their childhood? What they called "faith" was just one among all the other illusions. They placed all their hope in a certain sense of spiritual peace, of comfort, of interior equilibrium, of self-respect. Then when they began to struggle with the real difficulties and burdens of mature life, when they became aware of their own weakness, they lost their peace, they let go of their precious self-respect, and it became impossible for them to "believe." That is to say it became impossible for them to comfort themselves, to reassure themselves, with the images and concepts they found reassuring in childhood.
Place no hope in the feeling of assurance, of spiritual comfort. You may well have to get along without this. Place no hope in the inspirational preachers of Christian sunshine, who are able to pick you up and set you back on your feet and make you feel good for three or four days-until you fold up and collapse into despair.

Thomas Merton. New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions Press, 1961): 187.

2 comments:

billy said...

"inspirational preachers of Christian sunshine....." Wow, what a tremendous phrase, reminds me of that line at the end of our friend Martyn Joseph's song "He never Said," where he sings "He never said...everything little thing is gonna be alright..." as the song fades out.......it is a good reminder, I've been thinking about that a lot lately........thanks as always Jodie.....

Anonymous said...

each day we wake up as ourselves.
jesus sacrifice was for the person we were without him, so, we can only get better if we follow him a little bit, even if far behind.
sunshine ministries? how about one person hugging another person now and then. so many people never get hugged at all.
here is a little sunshine, tell your parents/siblings/friends/children that you love them. it's easy if you try. don't you like it when people tell you they love you? i do.